PUBLICATION PRINCIPLES
The Journal of Food applies the publication principles foreseen and accepted by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the World Association of Medical Editors, and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Furthermore, The Journal of Food also implements the publication principles set by DergiPark, which operates under TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM, where the journal is hosted.

Human and Animal Rights
For experimental, clinical, and drug studies involving humans, ethics committee approval and a statement confirming compliance of the study protocol with international agreements are required. In experimental animal studies, authors must state that the applied procedures comply with animal rights (Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals) and must obtain animal ethics committee approval. The Ethics Committee approval document must be uploaded to the DergiPark system, the online article system of The Journal of Food, along with the manuscript text.
Ethics committee approval, a statement of compliance with the international guidelines mentioned above, and evidence of informed patient consent must be stated in the Materials and Methods section. For case reports, these items are required if there is a possibility that the data/media may reveal the patient's identity.
For individuals under 18, a consent form signed by both parents, a legal guardian, or a supervisor must be provided.

Plant Materials and Field Studies
• Experimental research on plants, including the collection of plant materials, must comply with institutional, national, or international rules.
• Field studies must be conducted in accordance with local legislation, and a statement specifying the relevant permissions and/or licenses obtained must be included in the article.

Plagiarism and Other Violations
The quality of submitted data and analysis is of utmost importance to The Journal of Food. Authors must provide datasets upon request from the editors for review. The journal editors check textual content for plagiarism and duplication using relevant software. By submitting their articles to this journal, authors are deemed to have accepted that their articles may be subjected to plagiarism checks against previously published works. If plagiarism is detected before publication, the article will be rejected. This information may be sent to the authors' institutions and other relevant bodies. The Journal of Food does not accept articles that have been previously submitted to another journal for evaluation and/or previously published. Therefore, authors must ensure and declare in the cover letter that the article is not simultaneously submitted to any other journal. The exception to this rule is oral presentations or posters presented as abstracts at scientific conferences. It should be stated whether your article has been previously presented as an oral presentation or a poster at a scientific conference. This information should be added to the cover page or the relevant section in the online article submission system, and details such as the name, date, and location of the conference where the abstract was published must be specified. The ethical, scientific, and legal responsibility for published works belongs entirely to the authors. In checks performed with plagiarism detection software, articles with a total similarity rate exceeding 25% will be returned to the author for correction without being evaluated. A manuscript under process cannot be submitted to or published in another journal.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
All sources of financial support must be disclosed. All authors must disclose whether there is any conflict of interest in the process of creating their work. Any kind of financial grant or other support received from individuals or institutions for a study must be disclosed to the Editorial Board of The Journal of Food. To disclose a potential conflict of interest, the ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form must be completed and submitted by all contributing authors. The Journal's Editorial Board determines potential conflict of interest situations involving editors, authors, or reviewers within the scope of COPE and ICMJE guidelines.
Conditions that provide financial or personal gain lead to a conflict 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, execution, writing, evaluation, editing, and publication of scientific studies.
Financial relationships are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and inevitably affect the reputation of the journal, authors, and science. These conflicts may arise from individual relationships, academic competition, or intellectual approaches. Authors should, as much as possible, avoid entering into agreements with sponsors that restrict their ability to access all study data or to analyze, interpret, prepare, and publish their articles, with a view to gaining profit or any other advantage. Editors who make final decisions about articles should have no personal, professional, or financial ties to any of the subjects on which they are deciding. Authors should inform the editorial board about potential conflicts of interest to ensure their article is evaluated within an independent evaluation process and within the framework of ethical principles.
If any of the editors is an author on a manuscript, the relevant editor is excluded from the manuscript evaluation process. To prevent a conflict of interest, the manuscript evaluation process is conducted in a double-blind manner. Due to the double-blind review process, except for the Editor-in-Chief, none of the editorial board members, international advisory board members, or reviewers are informed about the authors of the manuscript or the authors' institutions.
Our publication team diligently works to ensure the evaluation process is conducted impartially, taking all these circumstances into account.

Authorship and Declaration
We adopt the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors criteria (JAMA. 1997; 277:927-934). For articles with two or more authors, each author must meet the necessary conditions for authorship by having participated actively and sufficiently in the conducted and reported work. The inclusion of each author in the author list should be based solely on the following principles:
(1) Contributing to the conception and design of the study or the analysis and interpretation of data,
(2) Having made substantial contributions to the drafting of the manuscript or its critical revision for important intellectual content,
(3) Approving the final submitted version of the manuscript.
All three conditions above must be met. This must be stated in the cover letter accompanying the submitted manuscripts. Other individuals who contributed to the work should be listed separately in the Acknowledgements section.
The responsibility for compliance with international ethical principles, such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, salami slicing, gift authorship, ghost authorship, and duplicate publication, lies with the authors. If such a situation is detected before or after publication of any research, the article will be withdrawn from the journal by decision of the editorial board.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Usage Policy for Authors
In line with the principles and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), The Journal of Food acknowledges the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in academic writing and research. However, to ensure transparency, accountability, and integrity, the use of AI must comply with ethical publishing standards.
Therefore, authors must adhere to the following rules:
AI Tools Cannot Be Listed as Authors
We follow COPE's position that artificial intelligence tools cannot fulfill the role of an author and therefore cannot be listed as authors on any submission. Only individuals who meet the authorship criteria (e.g., substantial contribution, accountability, and approval of the final version) should be designated as authors.
Disclosure of AI Use is Mandatory
"Authors who use artificial intelligence tools in drafting a manuscript, generating images or graphic elements of the article, or in data collection and analysis, must transparently disclose how and which AI tool was used in the Methods section and in the preface of the article." The following format can be used in the cover letter:
"In preparing the draft of this article, the authors used [e.g., Gemini, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Grammarly, etc.] for [a specific purpose, e.g., language editing, drafting parts of the introduction, summarizing literature, etc.]. After using this tool, the authors reviewed and edited the content as necessary and take full responsibility for the content of the publication."
The covert or unethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) may lead to the rejection of the article or the retraction of the published article.
This policy will be reviewed and updated periodically in line 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.

Guide for Section Editors and Reviewers
Purpose and Scope
This document provides ethical and procedural guidance for the Section Editors and Reviewers of The Journal of Food, in compliance with the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
It aims to preserve the integrity, confidentiality, and fairness of the editorial and peer review process; to define the appropriate and transparent use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in editorial and review workflows; and to promote accountability, transparency, and trust in academic publishing.

Fundamental Ethical Principles

• Integrity: Decisions should be based solely on the scientific merit of the work, independent of personal, institutional, or commercial interests.
• Accountability: Editors and reviewers remain fully responsible for their decisions and judgments, even if assisted by software or AI tools.
• Confidentiality: Unpublished materials cannot be disclosed or used for personal gain.
• Transparency: The use of AI systems must be declared, traceable, and limited to ethically acceptable purposes.
• Fairness and Impartiality: Reviews and editorial decisions must be free from bias related to the authors' gender, nationality, institutional affiliation, or research field.

Responsibilities of Section Editors
• Editorial Oversight and Decision-Making
• Section Editors are responsible for ensuring a fair and timely peer review process. Final decisions regarding acceptance or rejection of manuscripts must always be made by an editor. No AI tool can autonomously determine manuscript outcomes. Editors must critically evaluate AI-generated suggestions and ensure human oversight at every step of the decision process.
• Use of AI Tools
• Editors may use AI-assisted tools only for supportive functions such as reviewer matching, plagiarism detection, or language checks. AI tools must not be used to make final editorial decisions, generate decision letters, or assess originality and validity without human judgment.
• Confidentiality and Data Protection
Editors must not upload manuscripts or reviewer comments to public or unsecured AI systems.
• Accountability and Transparency
Editors remain accountable for all consequences of AI-assisted decisions. The use of AI in editorial workflows must be declared internally and be traceable. Editors must justify all their decisions, including those involving AI-assisted analyses.
• Management of Ethical Concerns
Editors must act promptly when ethical issues are detected. AI outputs indicating ethical violations must be manually verified before action is taken, in accordance with COPE procedures.

Advertising Policy
The Journal of Food is the Association of Food Technology's periodic, peer-reviewed, open-access scientific publication. To preserve its academic independence, the journal continues publishing activities without any commercial advertising or sponsorship agreements.
All editorial decisions are made solely on the basis of academic standards, scientific value, and a rigorous peer-review process, without any commercial or financial influence. The journal operates in accordance with the Association of Food Technology's financial and publication policies, and is committed to serving the public good and advancing scientific knowledge.
In line with these principles, the Journal does not publish commercial advertisements or sponsored content; it focuses solely on the dissemination of academic and scientific materials. Ethical publishing practices and editorial independence are observed throughout the publication process.

Appeals and Complaints
Appeals and complaint cases are handled by the journal's Editorial Board in accordance with COPE guidelines. Appeals must be based on the article's scientific content. The final decision on appeals and complaints is made by the editorial board. Depending on the situation, a mediator or an external ethics editor may be appointed to resolve cases that cannot be resolved internally. Authors must contact the Editor-in-Chief regarding appeals and complaints via the email address sarenyayinevi@gmail.com.

Handling Unethical Publication Behavior
In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fabrication, or plagiarism, the publisher, in close cooperation with the editors, will take the necessary measures regarding the article in question. This includes, in the most severe case, the immediate publication of a correction, clarification, or retraction of the affected work. The publisher, together with the editors, will take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of articles where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances will encourage or knowingly permit such misconduct.

Errors Detected in Published Works
If authors identify significant errors or inaccuracies in the published work, they are obliged to promptly inform the journal's editors or publisher and cooperate with them to correct or retract the article. If the editors or publisher learn from a third party that a published work contains a material error or inaccuracy, the authors must either correct the article immediately or present the justification for retraction to the editorial board, or provide the journal editors with proof of the article's accuracy.

Digital Archiving and Preservation Policy
Digital preservation is a set of processes and activities that ensure the long-term, continuous access to information in digital format by guaranteeing its availability and distribution. The preservation policy includes the following measures:

Website Archiving
All electronic content (website, manuscript draft, etc.) is stored on different sources. The content on one server is online and accessible to readers. A copy of the same content is kept as a backup. In the event of a server failure, the archive is provided from other sources. The Journal of Food ceased print publication in 2016, Volume 41, Issue 6. Since 2017, the journal has continued publication only electronically at https://dergipark.org.tr/gida.

Abstracting/Indexing Services
The abstracting/indexing services of our journal store basic information about articles. Additionally, some abstracting/indexing services archive metadata about articles and their electronic versions. Thus, copies of the articles are presented to the scientific community through these systems as an alternative to the journals.

Cessation of Publication
In the event that publication of this journal ceases, the articles will remain online and accessible to readers through third parties and archival processes as described above. Readers will be able to access the content via the link https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/gida in specific situations, such as in the event of publication cessation.

Authors' Archiving Policy
Abstract and Citation Information
Authors may reuse the abstract and citation information of their articles (e.g., title, author name, publication dates), including on social media platforms; however, a backlink to the article on the The Journal of Food website must be provided as a citation.

Accepted Manuscript Draft
The "accepted manuscript draft" is the author's final version of the manuscript, accepted by a journal for publication, including changes made in response to reviewers' suggestions, before it undergoes copyediting and typesetting.
Authors of open-access articles have the freedom to publish and share links to their articles anywhere immediately after publication. However, a backlink to the article on the Journal of Food website must be provided as a citation.