ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES OF THE AUTHORS, EDITORS AND REVIEWERS

Publication Ethics

The responsibilities and ethical rules determined below are considered in all editorial processes. In this context, the users of the Turkish Journal of Science (editors, authors, reviewers, section editors, readers) must comply with these responsibilities and rules. Responsibilities and ethical rules are given in detail below.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

• Authors should prepare and submit their manuscripts in their original form.
• Authors should ensure that citations in manuscripts are correct, complete and in proper form.
• Authors should specify and explain situations where a conflict of interest may arise.
• Authors should avoid actions such as Fabrication, Falsification, Plagiarism and Duplication, which are considered ethical violations, during the preparation and submission of the manuscript they submit to the journal. All responsibility for ethical violations belongs to the authors of the manuscript.
• Editors, section editors or reviewers can request raw data of the manuscript from the authors.
• Manuscripts that require an ethical report should be submitted together with the manuscript by the author.
• The manuscript has pre-control, evaluation, proofreading and publishing stages, respectively. In case of any errors or omissions in the manuscript in any of these processes, the journal is obliged to inform the authorities.
• A manuscript cannot be submitted to two different journals in the same process. An article published in a different journal or in the process cannot be submitted to the Turkish Journal of Science. In other words, there are two conditions for the manuscript to be submitted to the Turkish Journal of Science. The manuscript has not been uploaded to any journal or if the manuscript has been submitted in a different journal, the rejection decision must have been taken.

Authorship Rights

Researchers who contributed significantly to the submitted manuscript should be included as co-authors, and the authors should consist of these researchers. The corresponding author should send the manuscript to the journal after making sure that all contributing authors are included in the manuscript and that those who do not have authorship rights to the contrary are present in the manuscript. In exceptional cases, the corresponding author may add or remove authors or make changes in the order according to the contribution rate of the authors, provided that they present their reasons to the editor and the written approval of all authors (by e-mail, fax or letter). This is at the discretion of the editor and should be approved by all authors. No changes can be made to the authors in accepted and published manuscripts. In addition, the final version of the manuscript uploaded to the journal must be approved by all authors. Those who do not meet the criteria for authorship (for example, providing technical support, writing or translation assistance, compiling data, funding or project support) but contribute to the manuscript should be noted in the acknowledgments section. During the manuscript submission process, the Copyright Transfer form must be uploaded by the corresponding author. In order to have the right of authorship in the manuscript, the information of the author(s) must be in the Copyright Transfer form. 

All authors must meet the following criteria:

• Have contributed significantly to the analysis, acquisition and interpretation of data in the manuscript or to the design and concept,
• To have contributed intellectually to all processes from the idea stage of the manuscript to the end of the publication stage,
• To have been involved in the preparation of the manuscript or reviewing the entire content,
• Being responsible for all questions that may be asked about a certain part or all of the manuscript,
• To approve the final version to be published.

Ethical Duties and Responsibilities of Editors
Editors’ Relationships with Readers

Editors are obliged to consider the feedback from readers, researchers and practitioners about published articles. It is also obliged to respond to these feedbacks and take the necessary actions.

Editors’ Relations with the Authors

• Editors make decisions about the manuscripts based on the original value of the manuscript, the aims of the journal and the ethical rules.
• Editors should accept manuscripts with high scientific contribution in accordance with the responsibilities and ethical rules of the journal during the evaluation process.
• Editors should consider the positive opinions of the referees unless there is an important reason.
• Requests and feedback from the authors should be carefully examined and fulfilled if they comply with the journal's rules.
• Editors reserve the right to conduct research on ethical violations by sharing this situation with the institutions of the authors of the manuscript, when they detect any ethical violations in the evaluation, publication and subsequent processes of the manuscripts, or when they receive information that there is an ethical violation.
• Editors conduct all these ethical violation review processes on behalf of the journal within the framework of internationally accepted ethical guidelines.

Editors’ Relations with the Reviewers

• The referees to be appointed should be selected from the relevant field of the manuscript.
• The editor must ensure that there is no conflict of interest between the referees and the authors.
• The editor should guide the reviewers in the manuscript evaluation process and provide the requested information.
• The editor is obliged to hide the identity information of the referees through blind refereeing.
• The editor should give the necessary warnings to the referees for the timely, impartial and scientific evaluation of the manuscript.
• The editor should make an effort to increase the number of referees in order to reach a correct decision about the manuscript.
• The editor is responsible for considering and evaluating the feedback of the referees regarding ethical violations during the evaluation process of the manuscript.

Editors’ Relations with the Journal Owner and the Publisher

Editorial decisions should be independent of the journal owner and the publisher.

Publication of the Article

Editors are responsible for considering the publication principles, journal aims and international standards in the manuscripts to be published in the journal.

Article Retraction Procedures  

From the submission of the article to the journal until the end of the evaluation and revision processes, the corresponding author reserves the right to withdraw the article from the publication process.
For the articles that have been accepted as a result of the evaluation and revision processes and published by being assigned to the issue:
- Requests to withdraw the article sent to the journal editor by the corresponding author or authors with the right of authorship are evaluated by the journal editor and the members of the editorial board. If the request is deemed appropriate, the article will be retracted.
- In case plagiarism, conflict of interest and other ethical problems are detected in an article that has been published by being assigned to the issue, the corresponding author is informed and the article is retracted.
- If the published articles are retracted for any reason, the reasons for the retraction and the process information are transparently disclosed and published on the journal's website.
- Retractions are notified by the editor to all institutions and organizations where the journal is indexed.
- All retractions are carried out under the responsibility of the journal editor.

Post-Production Corrections

For the corrections requested by the corresponding author, researchers who have the right of authorship, and third parties in the articles accepted or published after the evaluation processes:
-The editor of the journal has the right to evaluate the correction request and make the decision as correction or rectraction.
-After the preliminary evaluation by the journal editor, correction requests will be evaluated by assigning referee. In the event that a correction decision is made for the article as a result of the referee's opinions, the correction of the relevant article is published in the journal issue that the journal editor deems appropriate.
-Copyright Transfer Form is requested from the corresponding author again before the correction is published.

Retention of Personal Data

Editors are responsible for not transferring the personal information to third parties except for the consent of the authors.

Ethics committee, Human and Animal Rights

The editors are responsible for protecting the human and animal rights at about manuscript in the studies conducted on humans and animals. The editor is responsible for rejecting the manuscript if ethics committee approval is not sent in the works that must provide ethics committee report.

Protection of intellectual property rights

Editors are responsible for protecting the intellectual property rights of all articles submitted and published in the journal.

Complaints to Editors

Editors are responsible for providing an open and enlightening answer to complaints from the reviewers, authors and readers.

Conflicts of interest and relations

Editors are responsible for taking action against conflicts of interest between authors, reviewers and third parties in order to complete the impartial and independent evaluation processes of the articles.

Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers

• The reviewers are responsible for not evaluating the manuscript if there is a conflict and relationship of interest.
• The reviewers are responsible for evaluating the manuscript with due regard to the principles of confidentiality and impartiality.
• The reviewers cannot use the work sent to them for any purpose until the evaluation process is completed and issued.
• When evaluating the manuscripts, the reviewers are responsible for not allowing the gender, nationality, religious beliefs, or political views of the authors to have an influence on the evaluation.
• The reviewers should use a gentle and constructive language when evaluating the manuscript and should avoid insulting, defaming and hostile comments and statements.
• The reviewers are responsible for evaluating the manuscript in a timely and ethical manner.

Open Access Policy

The publishing rights of the articles published in the journal are transferred to the journal by the authors. Therefore, provided that attribution is made, articles published in the journal may be distributed and reproduced free of charge for research or educational purposes.