Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

The publication processes of the  Journal of Health Sciences Arel University are carried out based on the impartial evaluation, improvement, and dissemination of high-quality scientific articles in areas such as clinical and experimental research, original case reports, and reviews in various branches of health sciences. The ethical principles that authors, journal editors, reviewers, and publishers must adhere to are outlined below and have been prepared by the guidelines and policies published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/).
The journal upholds compliance with the principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki, the Good Clinical Practice Guidelines, and the Good Laboratory Practice Guidelines, as well as the relevant regulations of the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Health, for all studies involving "human" participants. Submitting a copy of the Ethics Committee approval to the journal for research involving humans or animals is mandatory. Articles will not be evaluated if the required document is not submitted. Authors must specify the name of the institution granting the Ethics Committee approval, along with the approval date and number, on the article's title page.

Publisher's Responsibilities
• The Arel University Journal of Health Sciences is published by the Faculty of Health Sciences at Istanbul Arel University.
• The publisher recognizes that the decision-making authority and the peer-review process are the editor's responsibility during the article publication process in the journal.
• Unless journal articles are published on another institution’s page, the publisher is responsible for ensuring the journal's open, electronic, and free access to the journal's webpage hosted on the university’s website.

Responsibilities of the Editor, Associate Editors, and Section Editors
• The Editor and the Editorial Board are responsible for the publication and publishing processes of articles submitted to the Arel University Journal of Health Sciences. The Editor and the Editorial Board act impartially when making decisions regarding the journal and the published articles.
• The Editorial Board strives to improve the journal and enhance the quality of its publications.
• The Editor and the Editorial Board ensure that experts in the relevant fields evaluate articles.
• Attention is paid to avoiding conflicts of interest or alignment of interests between reviewers and authors during the evaluation process.
• The Editor and the Editorial Board do not disclose information about authors and reviewers to either party during the double-blind peer review process.
• When authors request information about the status of their submissions, updates are provided without compromising the confidentiality of the peer review process.
• The submission and acceptance dates of articles are published in the journal.
• The Editor and the Editorial Board protect human and animal rights in articles and reject manuscripts lacking ethics committee approval.
• Editors must not have any personal and/or financial conflicts of interest with the authors of the assigned articles.
• If a member of the Editorial Board is listed as an author in a submitted manuscript, they are excluded from the evaluation process of that manuscript.
• The Editorial Board reviews all manuscripts uploaded by authors to ensure compliance with the journal’s guidelines.
• The Editorial Board ensures that the manuscript evaluation process remains confidential and does not share details with third parties.
• All manuscripts uploaded to the system are reviewed impartially and without discrimination by the Editorial Board.

Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers
• Reviewers must not directly communicate with authors. Feedback, corrections on evaluation forms, and comments on the text are conveyed to the authors through the management system, DergiPark, via the editor and/or editorial board.
• Articles are assigned to reviewers based on their areas of expertise. However, if a selected reviewer feels the subject matter of the article does not fall within their area of knowledge, identifies a conflict of interest with the authors, feels unqualified to review the manuscript, or cannot complete the review on time, they should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process.
• Reviewers must evaluate manuscripts impartially and maintain confidentiality throughout the review process, refraining from sharing information with third parties.
• Reviewers must treat manuscripts, related materials, and their contents as strictly confidential.
• Reviewers should not disclose authors’ ideas or data.
• Reviewers must provide honest, objective, and unbiased evaluations of the scientific aspects of the manuscript. Personal criticism of the author should be avoided, and feedback should be academic, constructive, and supported by data, using respectful language free of personal insults.
• Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts based on scientific merit without considering the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnicity, citizenship, or political philosophy.
• If reviewers detect any ethical violations in the manuscript, they must inform the editor.
• Reviewers should submit their evaluations and suggestions by the deadline. If the review is not completed within the specified time, the assigned task will be canceled, and the editors will appoint a new reviewer.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors
• Ethics committee approval must be documented and uploaded as a separate file. The information in the ethics committee approval document must match the article title and author names.
• For research requiring ethics committee approval, the approval must be obtained and specified in the appropriate sections of the manuscript according to the journal’s writing guidelines (e.g., name of the committee, date, and approval number). For case reports, information regarding obtaining informed consent from participants must be included under the heading “Informed Consent Statement.”
• Authors must comply with copyright regulations for the intellectual and artistic works used. Sources must be cited for instruments like scales.
• Authors are responsible for disclosing all personal and financial relationships that could create a conflict of interest.
• If an institution has supported the research, this information must be included on the Title Page.
• Authors must confirm that the manuscript submitted to the Arel University Journal of Health Sciences has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration for publication in another journal.
• Only those who contributed significantly to the study (e.g., design, execution, data collection, analysis/interpretation, hypothesis development, drafting, and critical intellectual revision) should be listed as authors. All authors must have reviewed and approved the final manuscript for submission.
• Authors must cite sources using ethical principles during manuscript preparation.
• Articles submitted for publication must have a similarity rate (excluding references) of less than 18%.
• Ethics committee approval is not required for review articles.
• Authors must provide information and raw data related to the manuscript if requested to the editor or editorial board.
• Authors should notify the editor or editorial board immediately if they identify an error in their manuscript during review, early view, or electronic publication and cooperate to correct it.
• Suppose the manuscript originates from a thesis, abstract poster, or oral presentation. In that case, this must be stated on the Title Page (e.g., “This article is based on data obtained from the author’s master’s/doctoral thesis,” or “This article was presented as an oral/poster presentation at [name of the congress] on [date].”). Full-text manuscripts with identical methods, findings, or discussions as those in prior conference proceedings must be submitted for journal publication as articles.

Research Requiring Ethics Committee Approval
• Any research employing qualitative or quantitative approaches that involve collecting data from participants using surveys, interviews, focus group studies, observations, experiments on living beings, or similar techniques.
• The use of humans or animals (including materials/data) for experimental or other scientific purposes.
• Clinical research conducted on humans.
• Research conducted on animals.
• Retrospective studies requiring the protection of personal data in accordance with data protection laws.

Reporting an Unethical Situation
If you notice a significant error or mistake in a published manuscript or encounter behavior or content that does not comply with the above ethical responsibilities, please email it to https://dergipark.org.tr/balikesirsbd.

Complaint Policy
Complaints regarding any material published in the Arel University Journal of Health Sciences must be submitted within six months from the initial publication date. Suppose there are any complaints about the article process or content. In that case, authors must submit their complaints, along with justifications, via email to the journal’s editorial office at ausbyd@arel.edu.tr or through the journal’s website.