Publication Ethics, Malpractice Statement and Publication Policy


Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara Series C-Biology (Commun. Fac. Sci. Univ. Ank. Ser. C) is a single-blind peer reviewed open access journal which has been published biannually since 1948 by Faculty of Sciences of Ankara University, accepts original research articles written in English in the fields of Biology.

Faculty of Sciences of Ankara University takes its duties of guardianship over all stages of publishing extremely seriously and we recognize our ethical and other responsibilities.

The editorial board pursue the best practice guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). To guaranty the integrity of the published papers, Commun. Fac. Sci. Univ. Ank. Ser. C editors are guided for using COPE’s flowcharts whenever they suspect an ethical issue about the paper they process. The authors, reviewers, editors and owner of the journal are expected to strictly committed to ensuring the policy of publication ethics and malpractice, and respect to the following statements:

Authors

Papers submitted to Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara-Series C Biology must be original and adhere to a high scientific and technical standard. The authors are expected to strictly follow the policy of publication ethics and malpractice.

Copyright

Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara Series C-Biology is a free open access journal licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). Thus, Authors accept the following conditions:

• Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of its authorship and initial publication in this journal.
• Authors grant Faculty of Sciences of Ankara University to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
• Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.

Authorship

It is a fundamental condition that articles submitted to Commun. Fac. Sci. Univ. Ank. Ser. C have not been previously published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. After the manuscript has been accepted for publication, the author will not be permitted to make any new additions to the manuscript.

Before publication the galley proof is always sent to the author for correction. Thus it is solely the author's responsibility for any typographical mistakes which occur in their article as it appears in the Journal. The contents of the manuscript published in the Commun. Fac. Sci. Univ. Ank. Ser. C are the sole responsibility of the authors. Authors should not post their submitted work online in any sense, before or during the submission process, as this may cause nomenclatural problems.

With the submission of the manuscript authors declare that:

• All authors of the submitted research paper have directly participated in the planning, execution, or analysis of study;
• All authors of the paper have read and approved the final version submitted;
• The contents of the manuscript have not been submitted, copyrighted or published elsewhere and the visual-graphical materials such as photograph, drawing, picture, and document within the article do not have any copyright issue;
• The contents of the manuscript will not be copyrighted, submitted, or published elsewhere, while acceptance by the Journal is under consideration;
• Authors are expected to keep accurate records of the data and to have ethical attitude on processing data since intentional manipulation of dataset to fit the desired results will be considered as fraud. Graphics/Illustrations used to present data can only be manipulated to clarify the graphics. If so, the author must ensure that the manipulation does not lead to loss or misinterpretation of data. Techniques used to clarify images must be described in the caption part of the graphic/illustration.

Plagiarism and self-plagiarism

Plagiarism is unacceptable and any suspicion of plagiarism will be investigated by the editorial team. The article must be clean in terms of ‘plagiarism’, and the legal and ethical responsibility of the article belong to the author. Duplication of authors’ previous works (self-plagiarism) should also be avoided, or if necessary, it should be reported transparently and be fully cited in the publication itself.

The objectivity and transparency in research, and the principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed. Authors must cite appropriate and relevant literature in support of the results presented in their manuscript. Authors who already published papers on the same topic are expected to include citation of these papers, but they are expected to avoid excessive and inappropriate self-citation.

There is no page limitation for the papers. That is why, data and results gathered in the same framework should not be broken up into smaller publishable units. The authors are expected to publish their results obtained in a single framework as a unique and original publication.

Conflicts of Interest

There is a conflict of interest when someone is influenced in his/her choices or actions by a personal or financial interest such as recommendation of a reviewer, an editor’s decision or interpretation of a result by an author. In this case, every suspicion of a conflict of interest should be reported to the editorial team of Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara.

Authors should declare that they have no potential conflict of interest (financial or non-financial). If any, Authors must declare all potential interests in a ‘Conflicts of interest’ section, which should explain why the interest may be a conflict. Declared conflicts of interest will be considered by the editor and reviewers and included in the published article. If conflicts of interest are found after publication, this may be embarrassing for the authors, the Editor and the journal. It may be necessary to publish a corrigendum or reassess the review process.

Human or animal subjects

Authors should declare that their research does not involve any human participants and/or animals. Otherwise, when reporting experiments with human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human/animal experimentation. For manuscripts reporting medical studies involving human/animal participations, authors are required to provide a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study and confirming that the study conforms to recognized standards.

To ensure ethical research practices, authors are strongly advised to follow the ICMJE guidelines when reporting on studies involving human subjects. For any publication detailed information about a living individual, a signed consent form is mandatory. Similarly, for studies involving animals, authors must clarify if they followed established institutional and national guidelines for animal care and welfare. Authors using animals in research must ensure compliance with ARRIVE guidelines and the International Association of Veterinary Editors' Consensus author Guidelines on Animal Use, which promote humane treatment.

License Agreement of the Authors

In submitting an article to any of the series of the Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara, The Author/Corresponding Author certify that:

1. He/She is authorized by his/her co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
2. He/She warrants, on behalf of himself/herself and his/her co-authors, that:

• The article is original, has not been formally published in any other peer-reviewed journal, is not under consideration by any other journal and does not infringe any existing copyright or any other third party rights;
• He/She (and co-authors) is(are) the sole author(s) of the article and have full authority to enter into this agreement and in granting rights to Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara are not in breach of any other obligation;
• The article contains nothing that is unlawful, libelous, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of contract or of confidence or of commitment given to secrecy; 
• He/She (and co-authors) has(have) taken due care to ensure the integrity of the article. To his/their - and currently accepted scientific - knowledge all statements contained in the article claiming to be facts are true and any formula or instruction contained in the article will not, if followed accurately, cause any injury, illness or damage to the user.

Article-processing charges

The publication costs for Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara are covered by the journal, so authors do not need to pay an article-processing and submission charges. The PDF copies of accepted papers are free of charges, and can be downloaded from the website https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/communc. We print very limited hard copies that we believe this helps us fulfill our commitment to care of the earth for ourselves and next-generations. That is why, hard copies of the paper, if required, are due to be charged for the amount of which is determined by the administration each year. Hard copies of the issues are also available in the libraries of the Institutions having bilateral agreements with Faculty of Sciences of Ankara University, and the articles published are deposited in a trusted digital repository (LOCKSS).

Manuscript

Manuscripts should be typeset using a word processor editor. Authors should prepare the article using the journal's templates before submission to the editor via our submission system. For more information please visit the web page Author Guidelines.

It is a fundamental condition that articles submitted to Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara have not been previously published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. After the manuscript has been accepted for publication, the author will not be permitted to make any new additions to the manuscript.

Before publication, the galley proof is always sent to the author for correction. Thus it is solely the author's responsibility for any typographical mistakes which occur in their article as it appears in the Journal. The contents of the manuscript published in the Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara are the sole responsibility of the authors. When author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. If the editor or the publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, it is the obligation of the author to promptly retract or correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper.

When errors are identified in published articles, the publisher team of Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara will consider what action is required and may consult the editors and the authors’ institution(s). Errors by the authors may be corrected by a corrigendum and errors by the publisher by an erratum. If there are errors that significantly affect the conclusions or there is evidence of misconduct, this may require retraction or an expression of concern following the COPE Retraction Guidelines.

Article Processing Time

Two months are given to the reviewers for the evaluation of the paper. Total processing time of a paper ended up between three to six month, in general.

Editors

Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara Series C accepts original research articles written in English in the field of Biology. The editor-in-chief makes the final decision of acceptance or rejection, based on the reviewers’ reports and the recommendation of the field editor in charge of the review process. If there is any conflict of interest between an editor and an author, the editor in question will not be involved in the review and the decision processes.

The “Submission/Managing System” which is used for manuscript submission/processing in Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara uses a single-blind peer reviewed system that hidden the reviewers’ comments to authors. Reviewers can also send attached files that can be communicated to the author with the reviewer’s name anonym.

The names, affiliations and email addresses entered in our journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Every suspicion of ethical issues will be investigated by the journal. Any suspicious case on ethical issues, misconduct or conflict of interest can be reported to the editor in chief or the field editor who conduct the investigation. Editorial Board and reviewers/authors are encouraged for their opinion for the treatment of ethical issues. I the case of the involvement of other journals, editor in chief will contact the journal to make a common decision if possible.

In the case of plagiarism, the retraction of a publication can be decided. The readers and all persons involved in the decision and publication process of the article and employer of the incriminated author (or reviewer) works will be notified.

Editors should decline to be involved with a submission when they have a financial interest, a recent publication, current submission, a collaboration, close personal connection with any author of submission. Editors must also declare if they have previously discussed the manuscript with the authors.

The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (living and fossil animals) and the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants are rigorously followed by our editors.


Reviewers

Following Pre-Review process handled by Managing Editor, Manuscripts which conform to journal scope and style will be sent to at least two reviewers by the Field Editor, who will then act as the coordinating editor.

Communications Faculty of Sciences University of Ankara applies single-blind peer review, which means that reviewers remain anonymous by default. But, if reviewers want their names to be communicated to the author, then Field Editor will allow it.

The reviewers are expected to evaluate the paper in an objective manner. Reviewers are expected to inform the Field Editor for potential conflict of interest and they should decline to be involved with a submission when they have a financial interest, a recent publication, current submission, a collaboration, close personal connection with any author of submission. Reviewer must also declare if they have previously discussed the manuscript with the authors.

Confidentiality of the manuscripts they are reviewing should be maintained. Potential reviewers who decline to review a paper are encouraged to state the declining reason.