Publication Ethics
EKSEN JFA applies and accepts the publishing principles of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) organizations. In addition, EKSEN JFA applies the publishing principles determined by TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM DergiPark.
Authors who submit their work to EKSEN JFA are obliged to comply with ethical rules and are deemed to have declared that they have not committed any ethical violations. Studies containing ethical violations are rejected without being taken into the evaluation process. If an ethical violation is detected, a report on the matter is sent to the author and, if deemed necessary, to the relevant institutions, and the standards of COPE or equivalent guidelines are taken as reference.
During the publication process, EKSEN JFA expects that authors, reviewers, and editors do not engage in the “general actions contrary to scientific research and publication ethics” listed below.
1. General actions contrary to scientific research and publication ethics (Taken from the Directive of the Turkish Council of Higher Education Inter-University Board on Scientific Research and Publication Ethics)
a) Plagiarism: Presenting others’ ideas, methods, data, practices, writings, figures, or works, in whole or in part, as one’s own without proper citation in accordance with scientific ethical rules.
b) Fabrication: Producing data not based on research; editing or altering a submitted or published work by basing it on unreal data; reporting or publishing such data; presenting research that has not been conducted as if it has been conducted.
c) Distortion: Distorting research records and obtained data; presenting methods, devices, and materials not used in the research as if they were used; excluding data that do not fit the research hypothesis from evaluation; manipulating data or results in order to conform to relevant theories or assumptions; distorting or shaping research results in line with the interests of persons and institutions providing support.
d) Duplicate publication: Presenting more than one work containing the same results of a research as separate works in associate professorship evaluations and academic promotions.
e) Slicing: Dividing the results of a research into parts in an inappropriate manner that disrupts the integrity of the research, publishing multiple papers without referencing each other, and presenting them as separate works in certain examination evaluations and academic incentives and promotions.
f) Unfair authorship: Including individuals who have not made an active contribution among the authors; excluding individuals who have made an active contribution from the list of authors; changing the order of authors without justification and inappropriately; removing the names of those who have made an active contribution from the work during publication or in subsequent editions; including one’s name among the authors by using influence despite not having made an active contribution.
g) Other types of ethical violations: Failing to clearly state the persons, institutions, or organizations providing support and their contributions in publications of supported research; not complying with ethical rules in research conducted on humans and animals; not respecting patient rights in publications; sharing the information contained in a work assigned for review with others before publication; using resources, venues, facilities, and devices allocated or provided for scientific research outside their intended purposes; making completely unfounded, inappropriate, and deliberate accusations of ethical violations (YÖK Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive, Article 8).
EKSEN JFA expects the relevant parties to comply not only with the “general actions contrary to scientific research and publication ethics” but also with the responsibilities listed below.
2. Responsibilities of Authors
The author(s):
a) That the submitted article is the original work of the author(s),
b) That all authors have individually participated in this work and assume all responsibility for it,
c) That all authors have seen and approved the final version of the submitted article,
d) That all authors were included during the initial submission, that additions, deletions, and changes in author order will not be requested after the article is accepted, and that they will accept the editor's decision if this is required for ethical reasons and legally,
e) That part or all of the article has not been published elsewhere or submitted for publication elsewhere,
f) That the text, figures, and documents in the article do not infringe on the copyrights of other individuals, that the responsibility for obtaining copyright permission rests with the authors, and that EKSEN MFD's Editor and Editorial Board have no responsibility in this regard; that all sources used in the article are cited in the manner stated in the writing guide, and that if the visual materials used (figures, tables, photographs, maps, etc.) have been previously published, information regarding their source is provided in accordance with the journal's writing rules,
g) That they avoid actions contrary to the publication ethics mentioned above, such as plagiarism, falsification, distortion, re-publication, slicing, unfair authorship, etc.,
h) That the article does not contain any criminal elements or statements contrary to the law, and that no illegal materials or methods were used during the research,
i) That they will respond to revision processes (especially peer review revisions, layout processes, writing editor, etc.) in a timely manner,
j) That all works used are listed completely in the bibliography; that no fake sources were included,
k) that the editorial board may request raw data related to the study during the article evaluation process, and in this case, they will forward the raw data to the editorial board,
l) that while the copyright on the submitted article remains with the authors, they grant the first publication right to Eksen DEU Faculty of Architecture Journal to publish it as open access under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), and that they accept the copying, sharing, reproduction and adaptation of the works after the article is published, provided that appropriate citation is made and it is not used for commercial purposes,
m) that the article has not been previously published as a conference paper (provided that it has not been published as a full text), thesis, etc. this information will be included in the Declarations section,
n) If the study that is the subject of the article has been prepared with the support of individuals/institutions or with the benefit of project/research support, this information will be included in the Declarations section,
o) There is no conflict of interest regarding the study,
p) The author(s) are responsible for the information contained in the article and they undertake to inform the editor(s) and request correction or retraction if they detect an error in their article during the evaluation phase or when it is published electronically.
3. Responsibilities of Reviewers
Reviewers:
a) Must conduct an objective and impartial scientific evaluation. Reviewers should provide constructive criticism in accordance with academic etiquette and avoid personal comments containing insults and subjective judgments.
b) Must not have any conflict of interest with the authors, the study, the institutions, or any funding bodies, if any. If they become aware of such a conflict, they must withdraw from the review process.
c) Must inform the Editor(s) about any suspected ethical violations. They should also inform the editors and decline to review any manuscript for which they suspect a conflict of interest or a convergence of interests.
d) Must withdraw from the review process if they believe they are not competent to evaluate the submitted manuscript, if the subject is not related to their area of expertise, or if they foresee that they will not be able to complete the evaluation within a reasonable time.
e) Must not violate confidentiality and must not share the manuscript with third parties other than the relevant author(s), editor(s), or other reviewers. Additionally, reviewers should not upload the manuscripts they are assigned to evaluate, either in whole or in part, to artificial intelligence tools.
f) Must not use any data from a manuscript they have evaluated but that has not yet been published.
g) Should complete the Electronic Reviewer Evaluation Form for the manuscripts they assess; if they are required to upload additional files, they must anonymize these files in order not to compromise the double-blind peer review process.
h) Should respond to the review invitation within the specified time; they should also evaluate the manuscript they have agreed to review within the given timeframe.
4. Responsibilities of Editors
Editors:
a) Are objective and responsible for accepting, rejecting, or requesting revision of a manuscript.
b) Ensure that the articles published in the journal are original scientific and technical research articles, and reviews.
c) Must not have any conflict of interest with the authors, the study, the institutions, or any funding bodies, if any. If they become aware of such a conflict, they must withdraw from editorial duty.
d) Must not violate confidentiality and must not share the manuscript with third parties other than the relevant author(s), other editor(s), or reviewers. Editors should not upload the manuscripts, either in whole or in part, to artificial intelligence tools.
e) Must not use any data from a manuscript that has been accepted for publication but has not yet been published.
f) Must keep the names of reviewers confidential from the authors and must also keep the names of authors confidential from the reviewers.
g) Journal editors cannot submit or publish articles in the journal, except for “Editorial/ Başyazı”, during their term of office. Members of the Editorial Board cannot take part in the evaluation process of their own submissions if they submit an article to the journal.
h) Each manuscript must undergo a Double-Blind Peer Review evaluation by at least two reviewers. They ensure and support that each manuscript is evaluated impartially and in a timely manner by reviewers who are experts in the relevant field, and they prevent reviewer reports that do not comply with academic ethics and lack scientific merit.
i) Ensure that the reviewer pool is inclusive and continuously improve it.
j) Take into account consistent criticisms regarding the articles published in the journal, and communicate revision requests—along with notes indicated on the evaluation forms and the manuscript itself—to the author(s) via the journal management system while keeping reviewer identities confidential; they grant the author(s) of the criticized articles the right to respond.
k) Editors have the authority to make necessary changes and to edit the manuscript in order to ensure compliance with the writing and publication guidelines.