Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
4. Boyut / Journal of Media and Cultural Studies is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and pays regard to Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing published 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) on https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing


All parties involved in the publishing process (Editors, Reviewers, Authors and Publishers) are expected to agree on the following ethical principles.


All submissions must be original, unpublished (including as full text in conference proceedings), and not under the review of any other publication synchronously. Each manuscript is reviewed by one of the editors and at least two referees under double-blind peer review process. Plagiarism, duplication, fraud authorship/denied authorship, research/data fabrication, salami slicing/salami publication, breaching of copyrights, prevailing conflict of interest are unethical behaviors.


All manuscripts not in accordance with the accepted ethical standards will be removed from the publication. This also contains any possible malpractice discovered after the publication. In accordance with the code of conduct we will report any cases of suspected plagiarism or duplicate publishing.

Research Ethics
The journal adheres to the highest standards in research ethics and follows the principles of international research ethics as defined below. The authors are responsible for the compliance of the manuscripts with the ethical rules.


Principles of integrity, quality and transparency should be sustained in designing the research, reviewing the design, and conducting the research.

The research team and participants should be fully informed about the aim, methods, possible uses and requirements of the research and risks of participation in research.

The confidentiality of the information provided by the research participants and the confidentiality of the respondents should be ensured. The research should be designed to protect the autonomy and dignity of the participants.

Research participants should participate in the research voluntarily, not under any coercion.

Any possible harm to participants must be avoided. The research should be planned in such a way that the participants are not at risk.

The independence of research must be clear; and any conflict of interest or must be disclosed.

In experimental studies with human subjects, written informed consent of the participants who decide to participate in the research must be obtained. In the case of children and those under wardship or with confirmed insanity, legal custodian’s assent must be obtained.

If the study is to be carried out in any institution or organization, approval must be obtained from this institution or organization.

In studies with human subject, it must be noted in the method’s section of the manuscript that the informed consent of the participants and ethics committee approval from the institution where the study has been conducted have been obtained.

Author Responsibilities
It is authors’ responsibility to ensure that the article is in accordance with scientific and ethical standards and rules. And authors must ensure that submitted study is original. They must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere or is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere, in any language. Applicable copyright laws and conventions must be followed. Copyright material (e.g., tables, figures, or extensive quotations) must be reproduced only with appropriate permission and acknowledgement. Any study or words of other authors, contributors, or sources must be appropriately credited and referenced.


All the authors of a submitted manuscript must have direct scientific and academic contribution to the manuscript. The author(s) of the original research articles is defined as a person who is significantly involved in “conceptualization and design of the study”, “collecting the data”, “analyzing the data”, “writing the manuscript”, “reviewing the manuscript with a critical perspective” and “planning/conducting the study of the manuscript and/or revising it”. Fund raising, data collection or supervision of the research group are not sufficient roles to be accepted as an author. The author(s) must meet all these criteria described above. The order of names in the author list of an article must be a co-decision and it must be indicated in the Copyright Agreement Form. The individuals who do not meet the authorship criteria but contributed to the study must take place in the acknowledgement section. Individuals providing technical support, assisting writing, providing a general support, providing material or financial support are examples to be indicated in acknowledgement section.


All authors must disclose all issues concerning financial relationship, conflict of interest, and competing interest that may potentially influence the results of the research or scientific judgment. When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published paper, it is the author’s obligation to promptly cooperate with the Editor to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.

Responsibility for the Editor and Reviewers
Editor-in-Chief evaluates manuscripts for their scientific content without regard to identity of the authors. He/She provides a fair double-blind peer review of the submitted articles for publication and ensures that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential before publishing.


Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication. He/She must publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.


Editor-in-Chief does not allow any conflicts of interest between the authors, editors and reviewers. Only he has the full authority to assign a reviewer and is responsible for final decision for publication of the manuscripts in the Journal.


Reviewers must have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders. Their judgments must be objective.


Reviewers must ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential and must report to the editor if they are aware of copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side.


A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the topic of a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.


The editor informs the reviewers that the manuscripts are confidential information and that this is a privileged interaction. The reviewers and editorial board cannot discuss the manuscripts with other persons. The anonymity of the referees must be ensured. In particular situations, the editor may share the review of one reviewer with other reviewers to clarify a particular point.

Publication Policy
The content of the articles sent to the journal for publication should be compatible with the purpose and scope of the journal. The journal gives priority to publishing original research articles. Articles that have not been published before or that are not yet under evaluation in another journal for publication and that are approved by each author are accepted for evaluation.


Manuscripts that pass the preliminary evaluation are passed through the iThenticate plagiarism scanning program. After plagiarism review, eligible articles are evaluated by the Editor for their originality, methodologies, importance of the topic covered in the article, and relevance to the scope of the journal.


If the submitted article complies with the formal principles, the editor submits the incoming article to the evaluation of at least two referees from Turkey and/or abroad, and if the referees deem necessary, the final decision for publication is made after the requested changes are made by the authors.


After the article is sent to the journal for publication, the names of any of the authors cannot be deleted from the list of authors without the written consent of all authors, a new name cannot be added as an author, and the order of authors cannot be changed.

Open Access Statement
4. Boyut / Journal of Media and Cultural Studies is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Except for commercial purposes, users are allowed to read, download, copy, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This principle is compatible with BOAI definition of open access.


The articles 4. Boyut / Journal of Media and Cultural Studies are open access articles licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.en)

Article Processing Charge
All expenses of the journal are covered by the İstanbul University. Processing and publication are free of charge. There are no article processing charges or submission fees for any submitted or accepted articles.

Copyright Notice
Authors publishing with the journal retain the copyright to their work licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) and grant the Publisher non-exclusive commercial right to publish the work. CC BY-NC 4.0 license permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.