The Western Anatolia Journal of Educational Sciences (WAJES) is committed to upholding academic integrity through transparent, impartial and honest scientific output. The journal’s publication and research processes are conducted in accordance with national and international standards of publication ethics. With effect from 10 November 2017, the journal has adopted the following rules regarding publication ethics:
1) The journal's publishing practices are based on the obligations set out in the ‘Code of Conduct for Journal Editors (COPE)’. Further details are provided below.
2) The editor requests a report on plagiarism from the authors of articles submitted to the journal. Once the plagiarism report has been reviewed and the article approved, a subject editor and referees are assigned.
3) (Update dated 10 July 2019) From Volume 10, Issue 2 (December 2019), WAJES requires authors to submit a certificate of ethics committee approval prior to submission for article proposals involving data collection via surveys, interviews, etc. Information regarding the ethics committee certificate must be provided in the methods section.
4) Our journal adheres completely to the TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM TR Index standards and fulfills all national legal and ethical requirements outlined in the Guidelines on Scientific Research and Publication Ethics for Higher Education Institutions.
Under the publication ethics guidelines of the Western Anatolia Journal of Educational Sciences, all participants (authors, readers, researchers, the publisher, reviewers, editors, the layout team, and the secretariat) are expected to uphold these ethical responsibilities.
1. PRINCIPLES OF THE RESEARCH ETHICS
It is mandatory that all studies submitted to our journal adhere to the following ethical standards during the design, data collection, evaluation, and reporting phases:
Scientific Integrity and Transparency: The methodology of the research, data collection methods and analysis techniques should be consistent with standards of academic integrity and quality. Every stage of the study should be transparently documented and kept ready for inspection or verification at any time.
Informed Consent and Voluntary Participation: The study's purpose, methodology, potential risks, and the manner in which the data will be used must be thoroughly disclosed to all participants (instructors, students, parents, etc.). Additionally, a "Informed Consent Form" must be obtained from each participant. Participation in the study must be entirely voluntary, and participants must have the right to withdraw from the study at any time without facing any sanctions or pressure.
Confidentiality and Privacy: Individual or organisational data used in the research must be kept strictly confidential. The disclosure of identities must be prevented through methods such as anonymizing or coding data, and legal regulations regarding the protection of personal data must be strictly adhered to.
The Principle of Non-Maleficence: All protective measures must be strictly implemented to ensure that participants do not suffer any social, academic, physical, or psychological harm during the course of the research. In particular, when studying with vulnerable groups—such as children or individuals with limited capacity—written consent must be obtained from legal guardians, and the process must be managed with the utmost care.
Ethics Committee and Institutional Permits: It is mandatory to obtain a certificate of approval from the relevant institution’s Ethics Committee for all studies involving human-centred data collection processes, such as surveys, interviews, observations or experiments. If the research is to be conducted at a school or an official organisation, the necessary legal authorisations must have been obtained from the relevant institution. Details regarding Ethics Committee approval (date, reference number and committee name) must be stated at the end of the study after the article has been accepted; during the submission stage, these must be uploaded via the system.
Declaration of Conflict of Interest: Authors must clearly and transparently disclose at the end of the article any personal, institutional or financial conflicts of interest that could potentially influence the impartiality of the study or its findings.
Use of Artificial Intelligence: If generative artificial intelligence applications (such as Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.) are utilised in the research, their use must not contravene participant privacy, data protection principles or principles approved by the ethics committee. Furthermore, the use of artificial intelligence must be explicitly stated in the study.
2. PRINCIPLES OF THE PUBLICATION ETHICS
The Western Anatolia Journal of Educational Sciences adheres to COPE standards in journal publishing and defines the responsibilities of its stakeholders (Editors, Reviewers and Authors) accordingly.
Responsibilities of Editors
Impartiality and Editorial Independence: Editors evaluate submitted manuscript proposals based on their suitability for the journal’s scope and the significance and originality of the work. Editors do not take into account the race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, nationality or political views of the authors submitting a manuscript. No institutions other than the journal’s editorial board may influence decisions regarding corrections or publication.
Confidentiality: Editors do not share information regarding a submitted manuscript with anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers and the editorial board.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Editors and members of the editorial board shall not use unpublished information from a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent.
Publication Decision: Editors ensure that all articles accepted for publication are subject to peer review by at least two referees who are experts in the field. Editors are responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal will be published, based on the validity of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the referees’ comments, and relevant legal requirements.
Use of Artificial Intelligence: The scientific content, originality, accuracy and ethical responsibility of articles rest entirely with the authors; therefore, generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot cannot be listed as authors and may only be used as auxiliary tools during the process.
Ethical Concerns: Editors will take appropriate action should ethical concerns arise regarding a submitted or published article. Any reported unethical publishing behaviour will be investigated, even if it comes to light years after publication. The editors follow the COPE Flowcharts in the event of ethical concerns. Where ethical issues are deemed significant, corrections or retractions may be applied, or concerns regarding the matter may be published in the journal.
Duties of Reviewers
Contribution to Editorial Decisions: The reviewers assist the editors in their decision-making and help authors improve their manuscripts through editorial communication.
Timeliness: Any reviewer who does not feel sufficiently qualified to review a manuscript proposal, or who knows that the review cannot be completed in a timely manner, must immediately inform the editors and decline the invitation to review, so that a new reviewer can be appointed.
Confidentiality: All manuscript proposals submitted for review are confidential documents and must be treated as such. They must not be shown to others or discussed unless authorised by the editor. This also applies to reviewers who have rejected the invitation to review.
Standards of Impartiality: Comments on the manuscript proposal must be made impartially, and suggestions should be provided in a way that authors can use to improve the manuscript. Personal criticism directed at the authors is inappropriate.
Citation of Sources: Reviewers must identify relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors. The reviewer must also inform the editor of any significant similarities between the manuscript under review and any other article (whether published or unpublished).
Conflicts of Interest: Conflicts of interest must be disclosed to the editor.
Responsibilities of Authors
Reporting Standards: The authors of original research must ensure that the study and its results are presented accurately, followed by an objective discussion of the study’s significance. The article proposal must contain sufficient detail and references.
Data Access and Storage: Authors are required to retain the raw data from their studies. Where necessary, they must submit this for editorial review upon request by the journal.
Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must submit entirely original works; where they have used the work or words of others, these must be properly cited. Furthermore, it is important that any self-plagiarism—that is, similarities arising from quotations taken from the authors’ own thesis or previous articles—is kept to a minimum; in other words, such quotations must be properly attributed. Plagiarism, whether from others or from one’s own work, constitutes unethical publishing behaviour in all its forms and is unacceptable. For this reason, all authors submitting articles to the journal are required to provide a similarity report. The similarity rate indicated in the report will be decisive in determining whether the article proceeds to the peer review process. Manuscripts with a high similarity rate will be returned, and authors will be asked to make the necessary revisions. In this context, authors must make revisions taking into account not only plagiarism from others’ studies but also any self-plagiarism from their own theses or manuscripts.
Multiple, repeated, duplicate or simultaneous submission/publication: Authors must not submit a manuscript for consideration that has previously been published in another journal. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
Authorship of the Manuscript: Only those who meet the authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the text. These authorship criteria are as follows: (i) has contributed to the design, implementation, data collection or analysis stages; (ii) has drafted the manuscript, made a significant intellectual contribution, or critically revised it; or (iii) has reviewed the final version of the manuscript, approved it and agreed to its submission for publication. The corresponding author must ensure that all authors (as defined above) are included in the list of authors and must declare that the authors have seen the final version of the article and have agreed to its submission for publication.
Declarations and Conflicts of Interest: Authors should reveal conflicts of interest as early as possible (usually by submitting a statement form during manuscript submission and including a statement in the manuscript). All sources of financial support must be declared for the study (including grant number or other reference number, if any).
Referee’s Review: Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and to cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, evidence of ethical approval and copyright permissions. If a decision of ‘revision required’ is initially issued, authors should review their manuscript in accordance with the reviewers’ comments and resubmit it by the specified deadline.
Fundamental Errors in Published Works: Should authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their published works, they are obliged to inform the journal editors or publishers immediately and to cooperate with them to correct the paper by means of an erratum or to retract the paper. If the editors or publisher learn from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, they must require the author to either correct or retract the article immediately, or provide the journal’s editors with evidence of the paper’s accuracy.
3. PUBLICATION POLICY
Focus and Scope
The Western Anatolia Journal of Educational Sciences, which brings high-quality research in the fields of Educational Sciences and Subject-Specific Education to readers online at both national and international levels, aims to contribute to the academic literature through its peer-reviewed structure. The journal, which is published on a regular basis, appears three times a year in April, August and December. However, the editorial board reserves the right to adjust the publication schedule or, where necessary, to publish supplementary, special and conference/symposium issues.
Fee Policy
Having adopted the Budapest Open Access Initiative (12 September 2012), our journal makes its content freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. No fees are charged to authors at any stage of the manuscript submission, review (peer review) or publication process.
Peer Review Process
Manuscripts submitted to our journal are sent to at least two referees via a double-blind process, in which the identities of both authors and referees are kept confidential. It is anticipated that the peer review process will be completed within an average of 3–4 months. Manuscripts that successfully pass the review process are published in order of submission and in the appropriate number determined by the editorial board.
Confidentiality Policy
Confidentiality is a fundamental principle during the referee assignment and evaluation stages of manuscripts submitted to the Western Anatolia Journal of Educational Sciences. The referees who will review the manuscripts are selected solely by the editor and subject editors, and this information is kept confidential. In this double-blind process, referee details are never disclosed to authors, nor are author details disclosed to referees.
August 28, 2026
Page
1028-1048
