The manuscripts sent to AUJEF for publication should not be published or sent for publication elsewhere. During the manuscript submission process, the authors must declare that it has not been published or submitted for publication by any other means. Otherwise, the authors will be responsible for the consequences. While using tables, figures, and other kinds of verbal and/or visual materials published within the content of a manuscript, either in paper-based or in electronic format, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder. The authors must have legal, financial, and penal responsibilities related to this issue.

Intentionally or not, plagiarism means breaching research ethics. Publishing a piece of work having similar or the same content as other studies without citing them is ethical misconduct as well as an offence against the law. The editorial board has the right to act in accordance with COPE’s rules and regulations in case of any claim related to a manuscript having plagiarism, referencing manipulation, and/or data forgery. Authors must upload the plagiarism report to the journal system. The manuscripts having correspondences with other studies over 25% will be sent back to their authors without initiating the peer-review policy. The authors may submit their manuscripts after ensuring that the correspondence report of their respective manuscripts shows less than 25% similarity.

Misconduct of Scientific Research and Publication Ethics

• Plagiarism: Using other persons’ original thoughts, methods, data, or products without citing the sources or presenting another person’s work as one’s own partially or as a whole;

• Forgery: Using data that does not exist or is being distorted;

• Distortion: Distorting, spoiling, or corrupting research records or data; claiming that some tools or materials used in the research are not actually being utilized for the study. Altering, distorting, or shaping the research results to fit in the interests of those persons or institutions supporting the research;

• Duplication: Using the same research data in more than one piece of work;

• Slicing: Dividing the results of research into several pieces that violate its integrity of it and then publishing them as separate research paper;

• Undeserved authorship: Indicating those persons as authors who did not actively contribute to the production of the manuscript or not indicating the ones that actually contributed to the study in question. Changing the order of the author names inappropriately and unnecessarily;

• Not indicating/including the relevant information about persons/institutions/organizations supporting the research and their support;

• Citing those dissertations/theses or papers that have not yet been submitted or published;

• Not following the ethical rules and regulations and/or not obtaining the necessary permissions before conducting research involving human and/or animal subjects. Not respecting patients’ rights, giving harm to animals’ health and ecological balance;

• The misuse or abuse of resources, places, means, and tools that have been provided/allocated for the research;

• Proclaiming misleading/fallacious information related to scientific research and publications.

• Matters in which persons or groups benefit economically or personally may also cause a conflict of interest. The reliability of scientific research and published papers is partly related to objectively handling the conflicts of interest in planning, applying, writing, assessing, revising, and publishing them.

• Financial relations might include the most easily defined conflicts of interest, which may inevitably influence the reliability of the journal as well as the authors in a negative way. , These conflicts may arise from various issues including interpersonal relationships, academic competition, or intellectual approaches. The authors may want to avoid those sponsors, either commercial or non-profit ones, that may restrict access to all study data or propose to interfere with the processes of data analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, publication, etc.

• To prevent conflicts of interest, editors may try not to assign certain people as reviewers of certain manuscripts submitted by certain authors. The editor making the final decision about a manuscript should ensure that she/he does not have a personal or financial relationship with the relevant author(s).

• To make the reviewing processes independent of any unethical conduct, the authors are expected to inform the editorial board in case of a potential conflict of interest.

• The editorial board of AUJEF promises to consider all these possibilities and strive to make the reviewing process as objective as possible.