1. The BLR adheres to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scientific Publishing, as jointly determined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). (For policies see https://publicationethics.org/files/principles-transparency-best-practice-scholarly-publishing.pdf )
2. All manuscripts submitted for publication in the BLR must be original, unpublished, and not submitted for evaluation elsewhere. Each manuscript submitted will first undergo an editorial review for compliance with the Guidelines for Authors, Ethical Principles, and the BLR Publication Policy. Manuscripts that satisfy the editorial review shall be sent to two referees for blind review.
3. If unethical conduct is detected in the manuscripts submitted for publication in the BLR, the flow charts prepared by COPE shall be followed. Unethical conduct includes plagiarism, fake authorship, artificial research and data production, concealment of conflicts of interest, cases where the author did not personally prepare the submitted manuscript, unfair use of other works and the efforts of third parties, and cases where the names of the authors are not specified correctly.
4. All natural persons involved in the research and preparation of manuscripts submitted for publishing in the BLR should be notified of the impacts and risks of involvement, the nature of the data to be collected and used, and their intended purpose.
5. If the manuscripts to be submitted for publication in the BLR involve experimental studies, the required ethics committee approvals should be obtained for these experiments. The written consent of natural person participants should be obtained in accordance with the relevant laws, in particular Turkish data protection legislation (Law No. 6698).
6. If submitted manuscripts are prepared in cooperation with or funded by an institution or organisation, or within the scope of a project, the authors must make full disclosure of the same at the time the manuscript is submitted.
7. It is the responsibility of the authors to comply with the Guidelines for Authors, Ethical Principles, and the BLR Publication Policy, and applicable law, including, but not limited to, the rules on intellectual property and data protection.
8. Persons nominated as authors in submitted manuscripts must have direct academic and/or scientific contributions within the respective manuscript. Providing funding or access to resources such as books and articles for the preparation of manuscripts are not in themselves considered such contributions.
9. If there are multiple authors, the order of the authors should be determined by them.
10. The names of those who contributed to submitted manuscripts in a manner that is not considered sufficient for authorship, for example, by providing funds, resources, or technical support, should be listed under acknowledgements.
11. All conflicts of interest that have the potential to affect the results of manuscript submissions must be disclosed by the authors.
12. If an error or inaccuracy is detected by an author of a manuscript, an editor should be contacted directly and immediately to request a retraction or to make appropriate corrections.
13. The initial review of submitted manuscripts by editors shall be independent of and not be affected by the authors' gender, ethnic origin, religious belief, political views, or any other similar irrelevant personal factors.
14. Editors shall be responsible for the publication quality of the content published in BLR. They will ensure corrections are made and errata published when necessary.
15. Editors shall avoid conflicts of interest when sending submitted manuscripts to the referees. Referees should not have a conflict of interest with the authors or the financial sponsors of the respective manuscript or the research that is the subject thereof. The Editor-in-Chief has full and final authority over appointment of referees and is the final arbiter over publication of any manuscript.
16. Referees shall be appointed according to their expertise on the subject matter of a given manuscript. If a referee to whom a manuscript is sent does not consider themselves to be an expert, they should notify the editor who provided the manuscript. If a referee is not able to prepare the report on a manuscript that they had accepted for review, the editor who sent the article should be notified as soon as possible.
17. Editors shall take the necessary precautions to keep the identity of the authors confidential from the referees.
18. The referees act with the awareness that the rights on manuscripts sent to them belong to the authors of those manuscripts. The referees should not and cannot use the manuscripts sent to them in any way or purpose other than for peer-review, and should not discuss the content of the manuscripts with third parties.