Publication Ethics and Malpractice Principles
Ethical standards for publication exist to ensure high-quality scientific publications, public trust in scientific findings, and that people receive credit for their work and ideas. Publishing an article in a peer-reviewed journal is essential for developing a coherent and respected knowledge network. The editors of Acta Aquatica Turcica enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure the addition of high-quality scientific studies to the field of scholarly publication. The editorial and publication processes of the Acta Aquatica Turcica are shaped by the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the National Information Standards Organization, the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the European Association of Science Editors (EASE). In cases where we become aware of ethical issues, we are committed to investigating and taking necessary action to maintain the integrity of the literature and ensure the safety of research participants.

Ethical Responsibilities of Author(s)
It is essential to avoid the ethical mistakes listed below by all the authors willing to submit an article to the journal “Acta Aquatica Turcica”. Authors should refrain from data fabrication and falsification, and the authors should use their own words. Copying even one sentence from another manuscript, or even one of your articles published already, without proper citation, is considered plagiarism. It is unethical to make multiple submissions, which would affect the reputation of authors and journals. Redundant publications are deemed unethical. Editors will likely reject the papers as weak or similar to previous articles published from the same experiments. The authors of an article have to fulfill the authorship criteria recommended by the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. All the works done under funding must be declared by the authors. The corresponding author is responsible for presenting the contributions of the authors to the article.
All authors must have contributed significantly to the paper, and their contributions to the article should be specified. All authors are responsible for retracting or correcting errors if detected. The authors should provide a reference list in compliance with the Acta Aquatica Turcica submission rules.
Upon request, authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data to verify the validity of the presented results. This could be in raw data format, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.

The manuscript uploaded to the journal cannot be withdrawn by the authors for consideration by the Editorial Board of Acta Aquatica Turcica without an acceptable justification.


Ethical Responsibilities of Editor(s)
The editor of the journal “Acta Aquatica Turcica” is solely and independently responsible and has complete authority to reject or accept an article after a peer-review process. Editors must have no conflict of interest regarding articles they reject or accept. If any error is found, they promote the publication of correction or retraction. The journal’s Editorial Board handles all appeal and complaint cases within the scope of COPE guidelines.
The editors must preserve the reviewers' anonymity and monitor the editorial board's publishing ethics. They may be guided by the policies of the journal’s editorial board and constrained by legal requirements regarding issues such as libel, copyright, and plagiarism. The editors of “Acta Aquatica Turcica” uses the similarity index of ITHENTICATE to identify plagiarism. The editor may also confer with other editors or reviewers in making these decisions. If any malpractice is detected in the study, the editor will deal with the allegations appropriately.

Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewer(s)
Reviewers invited by the editors to evaluate an article submitted to the journal for publication are responsible for completing the evaluation form in detail regarding the article subject to evaluation and ensuring that this information is kept confidential. When examining the article belonging to the author with whom they have a personal interest relationship, they should withdraw from the arbitration by notifying the editor of the reason. Regardless of the author's personal identity (gender, belief, nationality, etc.) characteristics, the articles should be evaluated only according to their technical content. When they detect actions against scientific research and publication ethics (plagiarism, distortion, republishing, slicing, unfair authorship, and other ethical violations), they must report them in detail to the editors. Reviewers cannot recommend adding or removing citations to the article they are examining in line with their personal interests except for scientific reasons. They evaluate as soon as possible, taking into account the time interest of the author.

Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

PUBLICATION POLICY
- Acta Aquatica Turcica publishes qualified works in fisheries, aquaculture, natural water sources, ecology, and ecosystem studies. Submitted articles can be original research articles, case reports, short research papers, and review articles (for articles to be sent in "Review" format, those in the "English" language will be preferred).
- The submitted articles to the Acta Aquatica Turcica must not have been previously published elsewhere or given the rights to publish in any media organ. All responsibility for the submitted articles belongs to the authors. The journal editor is not responsible for the works' technical content and printing errors. The journal does not pay royalties for published articles or other works.
- The journal publishes articles written in English and Turkish, following the rules. The articles that are not prepared following the writing rules are given a warning once to correct the spelling. A second correction is not given, and the article is rejected.
- Authors must fill in the "Copyrights Notification Form" and upload it to the system while submitting the article to the journal.
- Editors may evaluate the submitted articles before taking reviewers' opinions on the article's scientific quality and give an early decision, either rejected or accepted. The section editors will decide to accept the submitted article for the blind review process and assign at least two reviewers who are experts on the topic. Then, editors may apply for another evaluation of the new reviewer or another section editor for the final decision if there is a disagreement between the reviewers' opinions. Finally, the Editorial Board must approve the articles accepted for publication in the Acta Aquatica Turcica in scientific content and form.
- The authors cannot withdraw submitted articles after entering the reviewing process, and authors cannot submit to another journal without the permission of the journal editorial board. All rights of the publication belong to "Acta Aquatica Turcica".

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS LOCAL ETHICS COMMITTEE APPROVAL
The Local Ethics Committee must approve all procedures performed on the animal for Animal Experiments. The relevant regulations on animal research are accessible at the link below.
"Working Procedures and Principles of Animal Experiments Ethics Committees" Official Gazette dated February 15, 2014, numbered 28914.
Link: https://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2014/02/20140215-6.htm

According to the mentioned regulation, an "Experimental animal" is any non-human vertebrate organism used in the procedures, including free-living or reproductive larval forms, live cephalopods, and mammals from the last third of their normal fetal development.
For this reason, authors must declare "Local Ethics Committee on Animal Experiments" approval for the studies that use experimental animals for the initial evaluation process of the Acta Aquatica Turcica.

ETHICS COMMITTEE APPROVAL FOR NON-INTERVENTIONAL RESEARCH
Under article 90 of the Turkish Penal Code No. 5237, Additional article 10 of the Basic Law on Health Services No. 3359, and the other international agreements require the approval of the "Non-Interventional Research Ethics Committee" for studies that involve data collection in various ways (questionnaires, interviews, focus group work, observations, experiments, interview techniques).
For this reason, "Non-Interventional Research Ethics Committee Approval" is sought for the preliminary evaluation of the articles submitted to Acta Aquatics Turcica and studies that include data collection/collection from humans.

ADDITIONALLY:
In articles published in journals, whether ethics committee permission or legal/special permission is needed should be stated. If it is necessary to obtain these permissions, it should be presented by the name of the approving institution, the approval date, and the issue number. In addition, if the study requires the use of human and animal subjects, an international declaration, guide, etc., should be declared.

Rights of Acta Aquatica Turcica
The journal Acta Aquatica Turcica reserves all the rights to withdraw an article even after it has been accepted or published when it becomes clear that the article has a severe problem with its scientific content or that it violates the journal's publishing policies.

Open Access
All research articles published in the “Acta Aquatica Turcica” journal are open-access. All the published articles are immediately and freely available for reading, downloading, and sharing by the readers. Articles are published under the terms of a Creative Commons license that allows the use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.

Price Policy
All articles published by Acta Aquatica Turcica are freely accessible online immediately upon publication. Acta Aquatica Turcica does not charge any article submission or processing charges from the authors.

Advertising Policy
Advertisements are not published in our journal.

Revenue Sources
Acta Aquatica Turcica is a journal published by a State University, “Isparta University of Applied Sciences”.

Access to Archive
The archive system of Dergipark is being used to preserve access to the journal content if a journal is no longer published. The archive of Acta Aquatica Turcica will be accessible using the link:
https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/actaquatr/archive