It is of great importance that all stakeholders in the process (editors, authors and reviewers) comply with the ethical principles and responsibilities of research and publication. The scientific and legal responsibilities of all articles belong to their authors.

All or part of the articles submitted to the journal should not have been published elsewhere and should not be in the process of publication. Manuscripts prepared from papers presented at scientific meetings can be submitted to the journal, provided that they are not published in full.

The code of ethics in the Asian Journal of Teaching (AJI) is based on the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) open access principles, DORA Declaration and Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license principles.

Open Access and License Policy: AJI applies an open access policy to ensure that scientific knowledge is accessible to all. All articles are published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license so that the content can be used for non-commercial purposes, with attribution and without modification.

Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI): According to BOAI, Open Access is “the free availability of peer-reviewed scientific literature via the internet, without financial, legal or technical barriers, to be freely accessed, read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed, scanned, linked to full texts, indexed, exported as data to software and used for any legal purpose”. 

Statement of Research Assessment (DORA) Commitment: AJI adheres to the principles of the Statement of Research Assessment (DORA) and adopts the principle of evaluating the value of articles based on their scientific contribution and originality, not only on the number of citations they receive. Accordingly, the academic contributions of authors are evaluated based on objective criteria and a fair and impartial approach is adopted in all publication evaluation processes.

Double Blind Reviewing and Plagiarism: The article evaluation process in the Asian Journal of Teaching is carried out with the principle of “double-blind refereeing”. All evaluations and feedback are communicated through the journal management system. All submitted articles are checked for plagiarism and articles with a plagiarism rate of 20% or more are rejected.

Self-creation of research findings, altering research data, submitting the work of others (data, text or theories), submitting the same work to two or more journals, splitting a work into several parts and submitting it to more than one journal are major ethical violations. Necessary actions will be taken in case of ethical violations. 

Research Ethics Principles and Approval

In line with the decisions taken by Ulakbim TR Index, articles are accepted according to the new rules and principles in 2020. It is mandatory to obtain an “ethics committee approval” document for studies that require ethics committee approval. Ethics committee approval must be uploaded to the system with the article. Information about the permission (name of the board, date and number) should be included in the method section and also on the last page of the article; “In this study titled .........., all the rules specified to be followed within the scope of the Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive of Higher Education Institutions have been complied with. Ethics committee permission for this study was obtained with the decision of the .................................... Ethics Committee dated ............. and numbered .............”

In addition, in the method section, it is necessary to include information that permission has been obtained from the owners for the use of scales, questionnaires, photographs belonging to others, and that copyright regulations are complied with for the intellectual and artistic works used. In articles without an ethics committee certificate (research data used before 2020, produced from master's/doctoral studies), the responsible author should write on an A4 file, “Ethical rules have been complied with in this research titled ...... I undertake that the “Asian Journal of Teaching” has no responsibility for any ethical violations to be encountered and that all responsibility belongs to the authors.” will be written and signed and uploaded to the website. Studies that do not meet these conditions will not be evaluated. 

Ethical Responsibilities of the Editorial Board

The editorial board is responsible for everything published in the journal. It should therefore take all reasonable steps to improve quality and strive to continuously improve the journal. It should use appropriate processes to ensure the quality of the articles to be published. The editorial board is responsible for preparing author guidelines to guide authors and updating these guidelines when necessary. The refereeing process should be explained in the journal system and any deviations from this process should be explained. Electronic submission systems should be designed to ensure that authors can easily access all necessary information. The editorial board is responsible for regularly monitoring the review process and preventing delays. The decision to accept or reject a publication should be based solely on scientific content and articles should be evaluated on equal terms without any discrimination. The editor should not change the acceptance decision on submitted manuscripts unless there is a serious problem with the manuscript. The journal should consider authors' objections to editorial decisions and implement procedures to address complaints. The journal should provide explanatory and informative feedback to authors.

A qualified peer review process should be carried out. Confidentiality of manuscripts submitted to the journal should be ensured. A guideline should be prepared to guide reviewers on what is expected of them. This guideline should be updated regularly and a link to this guideline should be provided on the journal page. The editorial board should take steps to keep the referee pool up to date and strive to have a large pool of referees. Referees should be selected according to the subject of the article. The identities of the referees should also be kept confidential. Reviewers should be encouraged to make their evaluations in an impartial and scientific manner. Rude and unscientific reviewer criticism should be avoided.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

A responsible author should be chosen to whom the referees' comments will be forwarded and to whom the readers can contact, and the contact details of this author should be included on the manuscript. Only one paper of the same author is accepted. For publications resulting from thesis work, the student's name should be listed first. Changes in author names or author order after acceptance of an article are not accepted. No such proposal should be made. Contributors other than the authors should be thanked at the end of the article and their contribution should be explained. 

The studies submitted for publication must be original. The article must not have been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous evaluation. The article must not have been published in whole or in part before. A single study should not have been divided into several parts and submitted to various journals. Authors may be asked to provide raw data related to an article for review. Therefore, raw data must be stored. If the research involves chemicals, procedures, or equipment with unusual hazards, the authors must have the necessary permissions. If subjects (animal or human) are used in the research, a document indicating that the subjects' consent has been obtained must be available. If an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, he/she must immediately notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the article.

Authors whose names are written in the article are considered to have made sufficient contributions to the scientific work and therefore share common responsibility for the results. The names of individuals who took little or no part in the research should not be written in the article, and the names of those who contributed to the article should not be left out. The extent to which each author contributed to the article should be clearly stated. No data written by others may be presented as the author's own. Authors must ensure that they cite appropriately the work and words of other authors if they use them. 

Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers should only accept articles related to their areas of expertise. Reviewers should evaluate the article they accept within the specified time frame. Reviewers should not accept to be reviewers just to gain information and opinions without intending to evaluate. Reviewers should take care to ensure that the “accept/review/reject” proposal they give for the article is consistent with the comments given in the review. Reviewers should evaluate within the principles of impartiality and objectivity. Reviewers should express their opinions clearly by supporting them with supporting arguments and necessary references. They should not include insulting and derogatory statements in their evaluations. They should not criticize the authors personally. Reviewers should avoid using the information obtained during the review process for their own benefit or the benefit of others or using it in a way that disadvantages others and deprives them of their rights. Reviewers should not contact authors directly without the permission of the journal and should not include another person in the evaluation without permission from the journal. Reviewers must notify the journal if they encounter any irregularities related to research and publication ethics.