The Journal of Buca Faculty of Education upholds the highest standards of academic integrity, ensuring that scientific knowledge is produced in a transparent, impartial, and honest manner. The research and publication processes of our journal are structured in accordance with national and international standards.

The Journal of Buca Faculty of Education is committed to national and international standards in research and publication ethics, maintaining the highest ethical standards. Accordingly, our journal has adopted the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). Furthermore, our journal complies fully with all national legal and ethical obligations specified in the TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM TR Dizin criteria and the Higher Education Institutions Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive.

1. PRINCIPLES OF RESEARCH ETHICS

It is mandatory to achieve full compliance with the following research ethics principles throughout the planning, data collection, analysis, and reporting phases of the manuscripts submitted to our journal:

• Scientific Integrity and Transparency: The methodological design, data collection instruments, and analysis processes of the research must align with the principles of scientific integrity and quality. Every stage of the research process must be recorded in a verifiable manner and remain open to audit when necessary.
• Informed Consent and Voluntary Participation: Participants (teachers, students, parents, etc.) must be clearly informed about the purpose, methodology, potential risks, and the intended uses of the data, and an "Informed Consent" form must be obtained. Participation in the research must be entirely voluntary; participants must be allowed to withdraw from the study at any stage without facing any sanctions.
• Confidentiality and Privacy: Personal or institutional data obtained from participants must be kept strictly confidential. Technical and administrative measures (anonymization, use of pseudonyms, etc.) must be implemented to prevent identity disclosure, and full compliance with personal data protection legislation must be ensured.
• The Principle of Non-Maleficence: All necessary precautions must be taken to ensure that participants do not suffer physical, psychological, social, or academic harm during the research process. When working with vulnerable groups, such as children or individuals with restricted capacity, written permission from legal representatives must be obtained, and a high level of sensitivity must be demonstrated throughout the process.
• Ethics Committee Approval and Institutional Permissions: For all qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-method research that involves collecting data from human participants—such as surveys, interviews, focus group discussions, observations, and experimental applications—it is compulsory to obtain "Ethics Committee Approval" from the Ethics Committees of the relevant institutions. If the research is to be conducted in a school or an official institution, legal administrative permissions must be fully obtained from the respective institution. Information regarding ethics committee approval (committee name, date, and protocol/number) must be explicitly stated on the final page of the manuscript (after acceptance) and uploaded to the system as a document with the initial manuscript submission.
• Declaration of Conflict of Interest: Researchers are obliged to transparently declare any financial, personal, or institutional conflicts of interest that could influence the results or impartiality of the study on the final page of the manuscript.
• Use of Artificial Intelligence: The use of generative artificial intelligence tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, etc.) during the research process must be conducted in a manner that does not violate participant confidentiality, personal data protection, or the research principles approved by the ethics committee, and such use must be declared in the study.

2. PRINCIPLES OF PUBLICATION ETHICS

The Journal of Buca Faculty of Education adheres to the COPE standards for journal publishing and defines the responsibilities of stakeholders (Editors, Reviewers, and Authors) accordingly.

Responsibilities of Editors

• Impartiality and Publishing Freedom: Editors evaluate submitted manuscript proposals solely based on the study's significance, originality, and relevance to the scope of the journal. The race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, nationality, or political views of the authors are never taken into consideration during decision-making. No authority outside the journal's editorial board may interfere with decisions regarding revision or publication.
• Confidentiality: Editors and the editorial board shall not share information regarding a submitted manuscript with third parties, except for the corresponding author, reviewers, and the publisher.
• Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Editors may not use unpublished data and ideas from rejected manuscripts or those still under review in their own research without the explicit written consent of the authors.
• Publication Decision and Peer-Review Process: Editors ensure that manuscripts submitted to the journal are evaluated by at least two experts in the field using a double-blind peer-review method. The final decision on publication is based on the reviewers' reports, the study's validity, and its contribution to the readership.
• Use of Artificial Intelligence: The use of generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, etc.) in the scientific writing process is accepted only as an auxiliary tool. AI tools cannot be listed as authors, and the authors bear full responsibility for the scientific content, originality, accuracy, and ethical compliance of the manuscript.
• Ethical Concerns and Investigation: When suspicion of an ethical violation arises regarding a submitted or published manuscript, editors take the necessary measures by following the COPE flowcharts. If the violation is substantiated, they implement procedures such as publishing a correction, retraction, or an editorial expression of concern.

Duties of Reviewers

• Contribution to Editorial Decisions: Reviewers assist the editor in the decision-making process through their evaluation reports and contribute to improving the manuscripts through constructive feedback.
• Promptness and Time Management: Reviewers who do not consider themselves qualified to review the manuscript or realize that they cannot complete the evaluation within the specified time should promptly notify the editor and decline the review invitation.
• Confidentiality: All manuscripts received for review are confidential documents. They must not be shown to, discussed with, or shared with others without the authorization of the editor. This rule also applies to reviewers who decline the invitation.
• Standards of Objectivity: Evaluations must be conducted objectively and based entirely on academic criteria. Personal or offensive criticisms directed at the author(s) are inappropriate.
• Acknowledgment of Sources and Plagiarism Reporting: Reviewers should identify significant published works that have been used in the manuscript but not cited, and report them to the editor. They must also bring to the editor's attention any substantial similarities or overlaps between the manuscript under review and any other published work.
• Conflict of Interest: Reviewers who have any conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscript must notify the editor and decline to evaluate the manuscript.

Responsibilities of Authors

• Reporting Standards: Authors of original research are obliged to present their work and results accurately and to subject their findings to an objective discussion. The manuscript must contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. When papers presented at conferences or symposia are converted into manuscripts, this must be clearly stated in a footnote on the first page.
• Data Access and Retention: Authors are required to retain the raw data of their studies. They must be prepared to provide this data for editorial review if requested by the editor or reviewers.
• Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must guarantee that the manuscripts they submit are entirely original. If the works or words of other authors have been used, this must be cited appropriately in accordance with scientific conventions. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Similarity reports indicating the similarity rate of all manuscripts submitted to our journal must be uploaded to the system. These similarity reports are examined during the preliminary control phase.
• Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication: Authors must not concurrently submit a manuscript that has been previously published or is currently under evaluation elsewhere to our journal. This constitutes a clear ethical violation.
• Authorship of the Manuscript: Individuals who made significant intellectual/scientific contributions to the conception, design, execution, data collection, or analysis of the study must be listed as co-authors. The corresponding author must ensure that all contributing individuals are included in the author list and that the final version of the manuscript has been approved by all authors.
• Declaration of Scientific Misconduct (Types of Violations): No actions contrary to scientific research and publication ethics—such as fabrication, falsification, salami-slicing, or unfair authorship (gift/ghost authorship)—must have been committed during the research and publication processes.
• Notification of Errors: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work or a work in early view, they are obliged to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to correct or retract the manuscript.

3. PUBLICATION POLICY

Focus and Scope

The Journal of Buca Faculty of Education is a peer-reviewed journal published online at national and international levels. It aims to contribute to the academic body of knowledge by publishing high-quality scientific studies at national and international levels in the fields of Educational Sciences and Subject/Field Education. Our journal adopts a periodical publishing model with a publication frequency of 4 issues per year (March, June, September, and December); however, the editorial board reserves the right to change the model and the number of issues. The editorial board may also decide to publish supplementary/special issues or special issues dedicated to conferences/symposia.

Fee Policy

Our journal is an open-access journal licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license and adheres to the "Budapest Open Access Initiative" dated September 12, 2012. No fees are charged for manuscript submission, publication, or processing of the peer-review workflow in our journal.

Peer-Review Process

Manuscripts submitted to our journal are sent to at least two reviewers based on the double-blind peer-review principle. The peer-review process is targeted for completion within approximately three months. Each manuscript that completes the process successfully is placed in the publication queue and published in an issue deemed appropriate by the editorial board.

Privacy Policy

Confidentiality is fundamental in assigning manuscript proposals to reviewers and throughout the evaluation process at the Journal of Buca Faculty of Education. The reviewers to whom the manuscripts will be assigned are determined and known solely by the editor and field editors. Throughout the manuscript evaluation process, author information is strictly withheld from reviewers, and reviewer information is strictly withheld from authors.