Peer Review Principles

Peer Review Policies
1) Articles that have not been published before or that are not yet under evaluation in another journal for publication and that are approved by each author are accepted for evaluation.
2) Submitted and pre-checked articles are scanned for plagiarism using iThenticate software.
3) The journal of Akif operates a double anonymized review process. All contributions will be initially assessed by the editor for suitability for the journal. Papers deemed suitable are then typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper.
4) The Editor-in-Chief evaluates manuscripts regardless of the authors' ethnicity, gender, nationality, religious beliefs, and political philosophy. It ensures that the articles submitted for publication undergo a fair double-blind peer review.
5) Editor-in-chief does not allow any conflict of interest between authors, editors, and reviewers.
6) The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor's decision is final.
7) Editors are not involved in decisions about papers which they have written themselves or have been written by family members or colleagues or which relate to products or services in which the editor has an interest. Any such submission is subject to all of the journal's usual procedures.
8) Reviewers should ensure that all information regarding the submitted articles remain confidential until the manuscript is published, and should report any copyright infringement and plagiarism on the part of the author to the editor.
9) If the referee does not feel qualified about the subject of the article or if it does not seem possible to provide a timely response, he should notify the editor of this situation and ask him not to involve himself in the referee process.
10) During the evaluation process, the editor clearly states that the manuscript submitted for review to the reviewer are the exclusive property of the authors, and this is a privileged communication. Reviewers and editorial board members cannot discuss articles with other people. Care should be taken to keep the identities of the referees confidential.

Review Process
Model of Peer Review: Double-blind
Double-blind peer review: After plagiarism control, eligible articles are evaluated by the editor for originality, methodology, importance of the subject covered, and compatibility with the scope of the journal. The editor ensures that the manuscripts go through a fair double-blind review and, if the article conforms to the formal principles, it submits the incoming article for the evaluation of at least two referees from the country and/or abroad.
Review Timing: Pre-publication
Mediation: Editors mediate all interactions between reviewers and authors
Days between submission & last decision: Of those sent externally for review, the median time to first decision for research papers was 50 days.
Check for Plagiarism: Yes – Ithenticate and Turnitin. The Akif routinely screens article submissions for Plagiarism.
Number of Reviewers Review Each Manuscript: Two
Time Allowed: 20 days. This period can be extended by adding 10 days.
Journal Acceptance Rate: We publish about 67% of the articles we receive each year. Roughly a quarter of all submissions are rejected without sending them for external peer review.
Decisions: In order for the manuscript to be accepted by the Editor, at least two reviewers must make an acceptance decision.

Suspect Research or Publication Misconduct: Reviewers should notify the Editor when they suspect research or publication misconduct. The editor is responsible for carrying out the necessary actions by following the COPE recommendations.

Editor screens every research paper on the day it is submitted and, if the editor feels that the paper merits further evaluation, it gets sent to an assistant editor for a more detailed review. For research articles, the assistant editor will usually take each article through from start to finish. We aim to reach the first decision on all manuscripts within two or three weeks, but often the initial decision is done within a few days of submission. If we do not think the Akif is the right journal for the work, we let authors know promptly so that they may submit their work elsewhere without delay. The usual reasons for rejection at this stage are insufficient originality and the fact that the topic falls outside the purview of the journal.
The next step for your research article is our Editorial Board meeting. The members will read your article and discuss its importance, originality, and scientific quality. To make editorial decisions for research articles, we focus mainly on the research question: even when the overall subject is relevant, topical, and important we may reject the article because the study didn’t ask a research question that added enough. Of course, we will also reject work if it has serious flaws. Everyone attending the manuscript meeting is asked to declare relevant competing interests at the start, and anyone with an important competing interest will either leave the room or speak last when the relevant article is being discussed (depending on the nature and extent of their interest).
If your article is potentially suitable for the Akif, the section editor will send your article for two external peer reviewer. Reviewers advise the editors, who make the final decision. We ask reviewers to sign their reports and declare any competing interests on any manuscripts we send them. The final decision is made by the Editor after external peer review processes.
Some articles may also be seen by the Akif's ethics editor and, in cases where the editor suspects serious research misconduct, by appropriate third parties.
We aim to reach a final decision on publication within 6 to 8 weeks of submission for all articles. If we make an offer of publication subject to revision we usually ask authors to return their articles to us within the subsequent month.
Accepted articles are published on https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/akif as they become ready. Once published, articles are then selected for a subsequent issue.
The Akif provides open access to peer-reviewed research as part of its commitment to readers and authors. We make all our research articles freely available online.
If you notice any error in your published article, email the editor who will advise you whether a correction can be made.

Peer Review Principles for Papers Submitted by The Editorial Staff
Editorials and analysis articles written by the Akif's own editors do not undergo external peer review. Articles reporting original research done at the Akif are independently peer-reviewed. During this period, those editors cannot enter the journal system, user accounts are disabled.

Authors Responsibilities
The author must comply with research and publication ethics.
The author should not attempt to publish the same work in more than one journal.
The author should fully indicate the works he has used in the writing of the article in the bibliography.

Editor's Responsibilities
The editor evaluates the articles for scientific content, regardless of the ethnic origin, gender, citizenship, religious belief or political opinion of the authors.
The editor makes a fair double-blind peer-review of the articles submitted for publication and ensures that all information about the submitted articles is kept confidential before publication.
The editor informs the reviewers that the papers are confidential and this is a privileged interaction. The reviewers and editorial board cannot discuss the articles with other people. The anonymity of reviewers should be ensured. In certain cases, the editor may share one reviewer's review with other reviewers to clarify a particular point.
The editor is responsible for the content and overall quality of the publication. It is also his/her responsibility to issue a correction note or implement a withdrawal as necessary.
Editor does not allow any conflict of interest between authors, editors and reviewers. It has full authority to appoint only reviewers and the Editorial Board is responsible for the final decision regarding the publication of the articles in the journal.

Responsibilities of the Reviewers
Reviewers should not have any conflicts of interest regarding the research, authors and/or research funders.
The evaluations of the reviewers should be objective.
The language and style used by the reviewers should not be offensive to the author.
Reviewers must ensure that all information regarding submitted articles remains confidential until the article is published.
Reviewers should notify the editor if they notice copyright infringement or plagiarism in the work they are reviewing.
A reviewer who feels inadequate to review an article or thinks that he/she will not be able to complete the review within the specified time should withdraw from the review process.
During the review process, the reviewers are expected to make their evaluations by considering the following:
  • Does the article contain new and important information?
  • Does the abstract clearly and neatly describe the content of the article?
  • Is the method coherent and clearly defined?
  • Are the comments and conclusions substantiated by the findings?
  • Are adequate references given to other studies in the field?
  • Is the language quality adequate?

The "Preliminary Review and Plagiarism Checking Form", "The Manuscript Peer Review Form" and "Book Review Evaluation Form" used in the Akif can be viewed on the journal's website.

Preliminary Review and Plagiarism Check
Study; The journal is reviewed by the editor for compliance with publication principles, academic writing rules and ISNAD Citation System, and is checked for plagiarism using the iThenticate and Turnitin program. The preliminary review is completed within a maximum of 15 days. The plagiarism similarity rate must be less than 15%. Even though the similarity rate is 1%, if the citation and citation are not duly made, plagiarism may still be in question. In this respect, citation and citation rules should be known and carefully applied by the author:

Citation/Indirect Citation: If a reference is made to an opinion, discussion or determination in a source and the cited opinion is written down the citing researcher's own words, the end of the sentence should be cited according to the ISNAD rules. If the reference is to a certain page or page range of the work, the page number should be given. If there is a reference to the whole work, that is, if it is cited in a way that requires the reader to examine the whole work, the footnotes include "See about this.", "See about this opinion.", "See about this discussion." or just “see.” The source should be indicated after the statement.

Citation: If the relevant part from the referenced source is taken exactly as it is, the cited part is given in double quotation marks and the source is indicated by giving the footnote number1 at the end. Existing quotations in the directly quoted text are written using 'single quotes'. If the directly quoted part is longer than three lines (more than forty words), it is shown as a separate paragraph. In order to distinguish long quotations from the main text, it should be preferred that they be written in a font size one smaller than the normal text size and the entire paragraph should be indented from the left at the beginning of the start of line. Some words, sentences and paragraphs can be omitted from the directly quoted text, provided that the meaning is not changed. Three dots (...) are put in place of the removed parts. It would not be correct to write the part that is quoted from a source without enclosing it in "double quotes" and to only write the source at the end. If these rules are not followed, the author may be accused of publication ethics (Plagiarism) (see https://www.isnadsistemi.org/en/).

Field Editor Review
The study, which has passed the pre-examination and Plagiarism check experiences, is examined by the relevant field manager in terms of problematic and academic language style. This review will be completed in a maximum of 15 days.

Reviewer Process (Academic Evaluation)
The study, which passes the review of the field editor, is submitted to the evaluation of at least two external reviewers who have a doctoral thesis, book or article on the subject. The reviewer process is carried out in secrecy within the framework of the double-blind peer-review practice. The reviewer is requested to either state his opinion and opinion on the study he has examined on the text or justify it with a minimum 150-word explanation on the online reviewer form. If the author does not agree with the referee's opinions, he is given the right to object and defend his opinions. The Reviewer process provides mutual communication between the field editor, author and reviewer, while maintaining confidentiality. If both referee reports are positive, the study is submitted to the Editorial Board with a proposal to evaluate its publication. If one of the two referees has a negative opinion, the study is sent to a third referee. Studies can be published with the positive decision of at least two referees. The book review, symposium evaluations and doctoral thesis abstracts is decided upon the evaluation of at least two internal reviewers (relevant field editors and/or editorial board members).

Revision Stage
If the reviewers want revision in the text they have examined, the relevant reports are sent to the author and he/she is asked to revise his work. The author makes the revisions with the "Track Changes" feature turned on in the Word program or indicates the changes in the text in yellow. Then, the author submit the edited text to the field editor.

Field Editor Control
The field editor checks whether the author has made the requested revisions in the text.

Review Control
The referee requesting revision checks whether the author has made the requested revisions in the text.

Turkish Language Control
Studies that pass the peer-review process are reviewed by the Turkish Language Editor and Editor, and if necessary, revisions are requested from the author. The control process is completed within a maximum of 15 days.

English Language Check
The works that pass the Turkish language control are reviewed by the English Language Editor and if necessary, revisions are requested from the author. The English language editor's control process is completed within a maximum of 15 days.

Editorial Board Review
The articles that have passed technical, academic and linguistic examinations are examined by the Editorial Board, and whether they will be published or not, and if they will be published, in which issue they will be included is decided. The Board decides by majority vote. In the event of a tie, the final decision is made in the direction of the editor's decision.

Typesetting and Layout Phase
The typesetting and layout of the works decided to be published by the Editorial Board are made ready for publication and sent to the author for review. This stage lasts for a maximum of 15 days.

Data Transmission to National and International Indexes
The data of the published issue is transmitted to the relevant indexes within 15 days.

Last Update Time: 10/6/23, 12:20:20 AM