ADENJ observes the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (🔗 Visit COPE Website), the ICMJE Recommendations, the DOAJ/OASPA/COPE/WAME Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, and the research-integrity requirements of TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM TR Dizin. Where this policy is silent, COPE guidance applies.

4.1 Peer review process

·         Every submission undergoes an editorial pre-check for scope, completeness, language, and similarity. Manuscripts outside scope or below the journal’s minimum standard are desk-rejected, normally within 10 days, with a reasoned explanation.

·         Manuscripts passing the pre-check are evaluated by at least two independent external reviewers in a double-blind process; the identities of authors and reviewers are not disclosed to each other at any stage.

·         Reviewers are selected for subject expertise and must have no conflict of interest with the authors: no shared institution within the last three years, no co-authorship within the last five years, and no current collaboration, supervision, or commercial relationship.

·         Where reviewer recommendations conflict, a third reviewer is appointed. The final decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief and is based on the scientific merit of the work alone.

·         Possible decisions are: accept; minor revision; major revision; reject and resubmit; reject.

·         Reviewer reports are stored in the journal system and retained for five years.

4.2 Responsibilities of editors

Editors are accountable for everything published in ADENJ. They must: - decide on manuscripts on the basis of scientific quality, originality, and relevance to scope, without regard to the authors’ nationality, institution, ethnicity, gender, seniority, religious belief, political stance, or commercial affiliation; - protect the confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewers, and authors, and use no information from an unpublished submission for their own purposes; - prevent, disclose, and manage conflicts of interest, including their own; - ensure that the editorial and reviewer boards reflect genuine international and institutional diversity; - act on ethical concerns raised about a submitted or published article and pursue them in line with COPE flowcharts, regardless of when the article was published; - publish corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern promptly when warranted; - maintain editorial independence from the publisher, sponsors, and advertisers, and refuse any commercial or institutional interference in editorial decisions.

Submissions authored by editors. Manuscripts submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, editors, or editorial board members are handled by an independent editor with no relationship to the author, who is given full authority over the process; the submitting editor is excluded from the system record for that manuscript and receives no information about the reviewers. Such articles carry a footnote recording the arrangement. Editorial-board-authored papers are limited to no more than 10 % of the articles in any volume.

4.3 Responsibilities of reviewers

Reviewers must: - accept only invitations within their expertise and only where they can report within the requested time; - treat the manuscript as a confidential document, not share it or use it, and not retain a copy after review, and not upload the manuscript or any part of it into a generative AI system; - produce an objective, constructive, evidence-based report, avoiding personal criticism, and support each criticism with a reason or reference; - disclose any conflict of interest and decline where one exists; - inform the editor of any substantial similarity between the manuscript and other published work, and of any suspected ethical breach; - not suggest citations to their own work in order to increase their citation counts.

4.4 Responsibilities of authors

Authors must: - submit only original work and cite all sources — including their own earlier publications — completely and accurately; - ensure that all listed authors made a substantial contribution, approved the final version, and agree to be accountable for the work; and that no one who qualifies has been omitted (guest, gift, and ghost authorship are misconduct); - obtain agreement of all authors before any change to the authorship list; such changes after submission require a signed statement from every author, including the one added or removed, and are not permitted after acceptance except in exceptional documented circumstances; - report methods and results with sufficient detail for independent replication, and retain raw data for at least five years after publication, providing them to the editors on request; - disclose all funding, conflicts of interest, and institutional affiliations relevant to the work; - not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously, and not divide a single study into multiple minimal-content submissions (“salami slicing”); - notify the editor immediately upon discovering a significant error in their own published work and cooperate in publishing a correction or retraction.

4.5 Ethics committee approval and human/animal research

Approval from a competent ethics committee is required for all research involving data collection from human participants by survey, interview, focus group, observation, experiment, or any other technique; use of personal or clinical data; and the use of animals for experimental or other scientific purposes. The committee name, approval date, and decision number must be stated in the Methods section and on the title page, and the approval document must be uploaded at submission. Studies on human participants must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki; studies using animals must comply with the ARRIVE guidelines and applicable national legislation. Informed consent must be obtained and documented where applicable. For research not requiring approval, an explicit statement to that effect is required. Articles based on data collected before 2020 must state this.

4.6 Plagiarism and similarity

All submissions are screened with iThenticate. The similarity index, excluding references and quotations, must be below 20 %, with no single source above 5 %. Plagiarism, self-plagiarism, text recycling, data fabrication, and data falsification lead to rejection at any stage. If such conduct is detected after publication, the article is retracted, a retraction notice is published permanently in its place, and the authors’ institutions and, where relevant, funders are formally notified.

4.7 Artificial intelligence and generative tools

·         Generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors; they cannot hold responsibility or accountability for the work.

·         Authors may use AI-assisted tools for language improvement, formatting, and readability. Any such use must be declared in the “Use of Artificial Intelligence” statement with the tool name, version, and purpose. Authors remain fully responsible for the entire content, including anything produced with AI assistance.

·         The use of generative AI to fabricate, alter, or enhance data, results, or figures is research misconduct.

·         Reviewers and editors may not upload manuscripts, reviewer reports, or any part of them into generative AI systems, since this breaches the confidentiality of the review process.

·         Editorial screening tools may flag AI-generated content; where flagged, the editors may request evidence of the underlying research (raw data, code, laboratory records).

4.8 Classified, export-controlled, and dual-use information

As a defence engineering journal, ADENJ applies an additional integrity requirement. - Authors are solely responsible for ensuring that a submitted manuscript contains no classified, restricted, or otherwise protected information, and that any institutional, corporate, or governmental release approval required by their employer or funder has been obtained before submission. - Manuscripts must comply with the applicable national and international export-control and dual-use regulations to which the authors are subject. - Every submission must include a signed declaration to this effect. - Where the editors judge that a manuscript may contain sensitive information, they may request written release confirmation from the author’s institution or decline the submission without further evaluation. Publication of a manuscript by ADENJ does not constitute a security or export-control clearance of its content. - ADENJ publishes scientific and engineering research. It does not publish operational targeting information, deployment or vulnerability data on fielded systems, or content whose only realistic use is to cause harm.

4.9 Complaints, appeals, and allegations of misconduct

Complaints about editorial decisions, review conduct, or the conduct of the journal are sent to [adenj@erciyes.edu.tr]. The Editor-in-Chief acknowledges receipt within 10 days and provides a substantive response within 30 days. An appeal against a decision must present a point-by-point scientific rebuttal; appeals are assessed by an editor not previously involved, and the decision on an appeal is final. Allegations of misconduct are investigated in accordance with the relevant COPE flowchart; the authors are given an opportunity to respond, and the authors’ institution is notified where the allegation is substantiated.

4.10 Corrections, retractions, and versioning

The version of record is permanent. Where correction is necessary, ADENJ publishes a correction (erratum/corrigendum), an expression of concern, or a retraction as a separate, citable, linked item with its own DOI. Retracted articles remain online, watermarked as retracted, with the notice stating who retracted the article and why. Articles are not removed from the journal except where required by law or where they present a serious risk.

4.11 Open access, copyright, and archiving

·         ADENJ is a fully open-access journal. All content is freely available immediately upon publication, with no embargo.

·       All articles published in our journal are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

·         Authors may deposit any version of their article in any repository without embargo.

·         Content is hosted and preserved on the DergiPark infrastructure operated by TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM, and articles are assigned Crossref DOIs.

4.12 Fees, advertising, and revenue

ADENJ charges no fees of any kind — no submission, processing, publication, page, colour, or reader fee. The journal is funded entirely by its publisher, Erciyes University. ADENJ carries no advertising and undertakes no direct marketing. Sponsorship of a special issue, where it occurs, is disclosed on the issue page and gives the sponsor no influence whatsoever over the selection, review, or content of articles.

4.13 Special issues

Special issues follow exactly the same submission, review, and ethical standards as regular issues. Guest editors are appointed by the Editor-in-Chief, are named publicly, and may not decide on their own submissions. Every special-issue manuscript is reviewed by at least two independent external reviewers.