The effects of thermal radiation in a heated jet of water vapor are studied with a direct numerical simulation coupled to a Monte-Carlo solver. The adequacy of the numerical setup is first demonstrated in the uncoupled isothermal and heated turbulent plane jets with comparisons to experimental and numerical data. Radiative energy transfer is then accounted for with spectral dependency of the radiative properties described by the Correlated-k (ck) method. Between the direct impact through modification of the temperature field by the additional radiative transfer and the indirect one where the varied flow density changes the turbulent mixing, the present study is able to clearly identify the second one in the jet developed region by considering conditions where effects of thermal radiation are moderate. When using standard jet scaling laws, the different studied cases without radiation and with small-to moderate radiative heat transfer yield different profiles even when thermal radiation becomes locally negligible. By deriving another scaling law for the decay of the temperature profile, self-similarity is obtained for the different turbulent jets. The results of the study allow for distinguishing whether thermal radiation modifies the nature of heat transfer mechanisms in the jet developed region or not while removing the indirect effects of modified density. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.