Human and Animal Rights

For experimental, clinical, and drug-related human studies, a statement confirming ethics committee approval and compliance of the study protocol with international agreements (the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki, “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects,” as amended in October 2013) is required. For experimental animal studies, authors must state that the procedures performed comply with animal welfare principles (Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals) and obtain approval from an animal ethics committee. The ethics committee approval document must be uploaded to DergiPark, the online manuscript submission system of Göbeklitepe Eğitim ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi, together with the manuscript.

Ethics committee approval, a statement confirming compliance with the international guidelines mentioned above, and evidence of informed consent obtained from the patient must be reported in the Materials and Methods section. These requirements also apply to case reports when the data or media presented may reveal the patient's identity.

For individuals under the age of 18, a consent form bearing the signatures of both parents or the individual's legal guardian or custodian must be provided.

Plagiarism and Other Violations

The quality of submitted data and analyses is of great importance to Göbeklitepe Eğitim ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi. Authors are required to provide their datasets upon request from the editors for review purposes. The journal's editors check manuscript content for plagiarism and duplication using appropriate software. By submitting their manuscripts to this journal, authors acknowledge that their work may be screened for plagiarism against previously published works.

If plagiarism is detected before publication, the manuscript will be rejected, and the authors' institutions will be notified accordingly. This information may also be shared with other relevant institutions.

Göbeklitepe Eğitim ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi does not accept manuscripts that have previously been submitted to another journal for evaluation and/or have already been published. Therefore, authors must ensure that their manuscripts are not under consideration by any other journal and must declare this in the cover letter.

The only exception to this rule is oral presentations or posters presented as abstracts at scientific conferences. If the manuscript has previously been presented as an oral presentation or poster at a scientific conference, this must be stated. The relevant information must be entered on the cover page or in the appropriate field of the online manuscript submission system. Details such as the name, date, and location of the conference where the abstract was published must also be provided.

Authors bear full ethical, scientific, and legal responsibility for their published work. Manuscripts found to have a total similarity score exceeding 25% during plagiarism screening will be returned to the authors for revision without being considered for peer review. A manuscript under consideration by the journal may not be submitted to another journal or published elsewhere during the review process.

Declarations and Conflicts of Interest

All sources of financial support must be disclosed. All authors must declare whether any conflicts of interest arose during the conduct of their study. Any financial grants or other support received from individuals or institutions for a study must be disclosed to the Editorial Board of Göbeklitepe Eğitim ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi.

To disclose potential conflicts of interest, the ICMJE Disclosure Form must be completed and submitted by all authors who contributed to the manuscript. The journal's Editorial Board identifies potential conflicts of interest involving editors, authors, or reviewers in accordance with the guidelines of COPE and ICMJE.

Circumstances that provide financial or personal gain may give rise to conflicts of interest. The reliability of the scientific process and published articles is directly related to the objective consideration of conflicts of interest during the planning, conduct, writing, evaluation, editing, and publication of scientific studies.

Financial relationships are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and inevitably affect the reputations of the journal, authors, and scientific community. Such conflicts may also arise from personal relationships, academic competition, or intellectual approaches. Authors should avoid, as far as possible, agreements with sponsors that provide financial gain or other benefits while restricting the authors' access to all study data or their ability to analyze, interpret, prepare, and publish their manuscripts.

Editors who make final decisions on manuscripts must not have personal, professional, or financial relationships with any of the matters on which they are required to make decisions. Authors should inform the Editorial Board of any potential conflicts of interest to ensure that their manuscripts are evaluated independently and in accordance with ethical principles.

If an editor is an author of a manuscript, that editor must be excluded from the manuscript evaluation process. To prevent conflicts of interest, the manuscript evaluation process is conducted using double-blind peer review. Under this process, no member of the Editorial Board, International Advisory Board, or reviewer is informed of the identities of the authors or their institutions, except for the Editor-in-Chief.

Our editorial team works diligently to ensure that the evaluation process is conducted impartially, taking all these circumstances into account.

Authorship and Author Declarations

We adopt the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (JAMA. 1997; 277:927–934). For manuscripts with two or more authors, each author must have participated actively and sufficiently in the research conducted and reported to qualify for authorship. The inclusion of an individual's name in the author list must be based on the following criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception and design of the study, or to data analysis and interpretation;
2. Substantial contributions to drafting the manuscript or critically revising it for important intellectual content;
3. Approval of the final version of the manuscript submitted for publication.

All three criteria must be met. Other individuals who contributed to the study should be acknowledged separately in the Acknowledgments section. The cover letter accompanying the submitted manuscript must confirm that all authors have fulfilled the required criteria.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that manuscripts submitted to our journal comply with international ethical principles concerning fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, salami slicing, improper attribution of authorship (gift authorship), ghost authorship, and duplicate publication. If any such violation is identified before or after publication, the manuscript will be retracted from the journal.

Editors' Authorship

The peer-review process at Göbeklitepe Eğitim ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi is conducted confidentially for all parties involved. Since confidentiality cannot be ensured during the evaluation process, editors may not submit their own manuscripts to the journal, except for editorial articles.

Section editors may submit their own manuscripts to Göbeklitepe Eğitim ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi. Such manuscripts are subject to confidential peer review, just like manuscripts submitted by other authors. Editors-in-Chief and section editors are required to disclose any conflicts of interest between themselves to the journal management.

Journal administrators may not advise or exert pressure on editors regarding manuscripts submitted to Göbeklitepe Eğitim ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi.

Manuscripts may be submitted for evaluation only after written approval has been obtained from all contributing authors. The author list must include all individuals who qualify for authorship in accordance with the authorship policies of ICMJE and COPE.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Policy for Authors

In accordance with the principles and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Göbeklitepe Eğitim ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi recognizes the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in academic writing and research. However, the use of AI must comply with ethical publishing standards to ensure transparency, accountability, and integrity.

Authors are therefore required to comply with the following rules:

1. AI Tools Cannot Be Listed as Authors

The journal follows COPE's position that AI tools cannot fulfill the role of an author and therefore cannot be listed as authors of any submission. Only individuals who meet the authorship criteria, including making substantial contributions, accepting accountability, and approving the final version, may be identified as authors.

2. Disclosure of AI Use Is Mandatory

Authors who use AI tools in preparing a manuscript, creating images or graphical elements for an article, or collecting and analyzing data must transparently disclose in the Methods section and the cover letter which AI tool was used and how it was used.

The following format may be used in the cover letter:

“During the preparation of this manuscript, the authors used [Tool Name, e.g., ChatGPT, OpenAI] for [a specific purpose, e.g., language editing, drafting certain parts of the introduction, or summarizing background literature]. After using this tool, the authors reviewed and edited the content as necessary and take full responsibility for the content of the publication.”

Undisclosed or unethical use of AI may result in the rejection of the manuscript or the retraction of a published article.

This policy will be reviewed and updated periodically in accordance with COPE guidance and evolving best practices.

If you have any questions regarding the use of AI tools, please contact the editorial office before submission.

Advertising Policy

Göbeklitepe Eğitim ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi is the official, peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal of Harran University. To preserve its academic independence, the journal conducts its publishing activities independently of all commercial advertising and sponsorship agreements.

All editorial decisions are based solely on academic standards, scientific merit, and a rigorous peer-review process, without any commercial or financial influence. The journal operates in accordance with Harran University's financial and publishing policies, with a commitment to serving the public interest and advancing scientific knowledge.

In line with these principles, the journal does not publish commercial advertisements or sponsored content. It is dedicated exclusively to the dissemination of academic and scientific materials. Ethical publishing practices and editorial independence are upheld at every stage of the publication process.

Appeals and Complaints

Appeals and complaints are handled by the journal's Editorial Board in accordance with COPE guidelines. Appeals must be based on the scientific content of the manuscript. The Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision regarding appeals and complaints.

Depending on the circumstances, a mediator or an external ethics editor may be appointed to resolve cases that cannot be settled internally. Authors should contact the Editor-in-Chief by email regarding their appeals and complaints.

Handling of Unethical Publishing Behavior

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fabrication, or plagiarism, the publisher will take all appropriate measures to amend the article in question, working closely with the editors. In the most serious cases, these measures include the prompt publication of a correction, clarification, or retraction of the affected work.

Together with the editors, the publisher will take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of article