Alterlab Tr Academic Style

Turkish APA-7 and TR Dizin Style

Applies Turkish academic-writing conventions to a manuscript: the TR Dizin (TUBITAK ULAKBIM's national citation index — Türkiye'nin ulusal atıf dizini) manuscript-formatting rules, and the Türkçe APA 7 (the Turkish-language adaptation of APA 7th edition) for in-text citations and the reference list. This is the style/formatting skill for the Turkish track — it does not check whether a journal is actually indexed (that is alterlab-trdizin), and it is distinct from the English citation skills.

It exists because the suite's other writing skills (alterlab-citation-mgmt, alterlab-venue-templates, alterlab-paper-writer) target English-language APA/IEEE/Vancouver output. Turkish journals impose their own bilingual öz (abstract) requirements and a citation dialect with Turkish abbreviations (ve ark., vd., s., Çev., t.y., aktaran) that those skills do not produce.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when the request is about writing/formatting a Turkish manuscript or its citations:

• "Bu makaleyi TR Dizin formatına göre düzenle" — format a manuscript to TR Dizin rules.
• "Türkçe APA 7'ye göre kaynakça/atıf düzelt" — fix references / in-text cites to Turkish APA 7.
• Writing a bilingual öz + abstract pair (Turkish öz and Latin-script English abstract).
• Deciding whether to write ve ark. or vd., where the & ampersand is allowed, how to write s./ss., Çev., t.y., or aktaran.
• Checking a Turkish journal manuscript against TR Dizin's structural requirements before submission.

Does NOT Trigger

Route adjacent requests to the correct sibling skill:

This skill owns how Turkish text and citations are formatted, not whether the underlying journal/index/claim is real.

TR Dizin manuscript requirements

TR Dizin is a citation index with editorial criteria, separate from DergiPark hosting — hosting on DergiPark does not imply TR Dizin indexing. Distinguish two layers and never present house conventions as index rules:

What TR Dizin itself mandates (from its official evaluation criteria):

• A word limit for the abstract must be set and enforced — TR Dizin specifies no number, and gives no keyword count.
• Second-language metadata is suggested, not required. TR Dizin only suggests a title/abstract/keywords in a language other than the article's. It mandates Latin script only for non-Latin-alphabet articles (their title/abstract/keywords/references), and requires the reference list in Latin script.
• At least two referees per article, from different institutions (farklı kurumlardan hakem); a manuscript should arrive review-ready.

Common Turkish-journal house conventions (widespread, but the journal's rules — confirm against its yazım kuralları, do not attribute to TR Dizin):

• Bilingual abstract: a Turkish öz + an English abstract, each ~200-250 words — a frequent default, not a TR Dizin figure.
• Keywords: 3-5 (anahtar kelimeler) per language — a frequent default.
• Structured abstract where the field requires it (e.g. health sciences): purpose, method, results, conclusion as labelled segments.
• Latin Turkish letters with diacritics in the metadata block (İ/ı, Ş/ş, Ğ/ğ, Ç/ç, Ö/ö, Ü/ü), not ASCII — so the record harvests cleanly.

Full criteria detail, the verbatim TR Dizin wording, and source links live in references/trdizin_manuscript.md. For live index status ("is journal X in TR Dizin right now?") do not guess — defer to alterlab-trdizin.

Verify current TR Dizin criteria against the official page before a real submission — ULAKBIM revises them periodically. Source of record: https://trdizin.gov.tr/?p=456

Türkçe APA 7 — the deltas from English APA 7

Turkish APA 7 keeps APA's structure but swaps the connective words and abbreviations into Turkish. The high-frequency deltas:

Key rules:

1. Ampersand & belongs only in the reference list and in parenthetical in-text citations. In running Turkish prose use the word ve.
2. ve ark. vs vd. — both render "et al." Pick one and apply it consistently across the whole manuscript (a journal may mandate one).
3. aktaran marks a secondary citation (you read source B citing source A): (Yılmaz, 2018, aktaran Demir, 2021).
4. Turkish capitalization & diacritics are preserved in titles and author names — never strip İ/ı, Ş/ş, Ğ/ğ, Ç/ç, Ö/ö, Ü/ü. Sentence-case article titles as in APA, using Turkish casing rules.

Worked in-text and reference-list examples (book, chapter, journal article, thesis, translated work, secondary citation) are in references/turkce_apa7.md.

Workflow

1. Identify the target. Confirm the journal is Turkish/Türkçe and whether it follows TR Dizin rules and/or Türkçe APA 7. If the user actually needs an English venue template, stop and route to alterlab-venue-templates.

2. Structure the metadata block. Draft or check the öz/abstract and keywords. Propose the common house defaults (bilingual öz + abstract ~200-250 words each, 3-5 keywords each) but tell the user these are the journal's convention — TR Dizin itself only requires a word limit be set — so they must confirm the figures against the journal's yazım kuralları. Keep the metadata in proper Latin Turkish letters with diacritics. See the TR Dizin section.

3. Convert citations. Rewrite in-text citations and the reference list into Türkçe APA 7 using the delta table; preserve all diacritics.

4. Lint. Run the citation linter to catch the common mechanical errors (English abbreviations left in, & used in narrative prose, mixed ve ark./vd.):

   uv run python skills/turkish-academia/alterlab-tr-academic-style/scripts/tr_apa_lint.py manuscript.md
   

   It reads a .md/.txt/.tex file (or stdin), reports line-numbered findings as text or --json, and is stdlib-only (no network, no deps).

5. Report. Present the corrected text plus the lint findings. Flag any point where a journal's own guide may override the default (e.g. it mandates vd. not ve ark.), and remind the user to confirm live TR Dizin status via alterlab-trdizin before submitting.

Self-Check Before Reporting

• Did you present 200-250 words / 3-5 keywords / mandatory-bilingual as the journal's house convention (to confirm against its yazım kuralları), not as a TR Dizin index rule?
• Did you scope TR Dizin's own requirements correctly (word limit set; 2 referees from different institutions; second-language abstract suggested; Latin script mandated for non-Latin-alphabet articles)?
• Is & confined to the reference list and parenthetical cites (never narrative prose)?
• Is ve ark./vd. consistent throughout?
• Are all Turkish diacritics intact in names and titles?
• Did you avoid asserting a journal's TR Dizin index status from memory? (That is alterlab-trdizin's job.)

References

• references/trdizin_manuscript.md — TR Dizin manuscript-formatting criteria, the DergiPark-vs-TR-Dizin distinction, and source links.
• references/turkce_apa7.md — full Türkçe APA 7 delta tables with worked in-text and reference-list examples.

Part of the AlterLab Academic Skills suite.