PUBLICATION PRINCIPLES
1. International Journal of Volga - Ural and Turkestan Studies (IJVUTS) accepts articles in Turkish and English. 
2. Articles written in different languages but having a special importance in their fields will be sent to reviewers if approved by the absolute majority of the publication board.
3. IJVUTS is a journal published electronically. The whole volume of the journal or PDF formats of the articles are available free of charge. Therefore, hardcopy of the journal is not sent to writers or third parties.
4. All the scientific and legal responsibilities of the articles are taken by the author. In this regard, our journal cannot be put under any obligation. The authors sending their manuscripts to the journal are regarded to accept and acknowledge this.
5. IJVUTS does not accept articles published or sent for revival anywhere else. The authors subscribing to the internet site of the journal and uploading their manuscripts are considered to accept this beforehand. In this regard, our journal acts based on the author’s statement and the author is under the obligation of making declaration of the truth. If the opposite is detected, every legal, scientific and ethical responsibility is taken by the author.
6. Authors are obliged to make truthful statements. Any legal, scientific and ethical responsibility belongs to the authors in case of detection of any contrary situation.
7. The manuscripts uploaded into the system of the journal are sent to two reviewers to be evaluated. If two of the reviewers approve it, the article proceeds through the process of publication. If both of the reviewers refute the article, the article cannot be published. If one of the reviewers approves but the other refutes, the manuscript is sent to third reviewer and based on the evaluation of the third reviewer, decision is made.
8. Appointment of reviewers, their works and evaluation processes are kept secret. Which reviewers evaluate which manuscripts is only known by the publication board and editors of the journal. In this regard, no information is given to authors. (For Review Forms)
9. Reviewers can require corrections for manuscripts they have reviewed. These corrections can be large-scale or small-scale corrections. Two chances are given to authors for the corrections. For each of these corrections, time given to the author cannot be more than 15 days. The articles that cannot be corrected within due time are refuted.
10. If any study that was presented as a thesis, paper, poster etc. anywhere previously was turned into a manuscript and uploaded to the system of the journal, information about the prior presentation of the article should be given in the first page of the article in the form of footnote. If this is not done, the author is viewed to have committed “ethical violation”.
11. Copyrights of the articles uploaded to the system of the journal are delivered to the journal. No signature or confirmation is required from the author for this operation. No fee is paid to the author for the publication of the article.
12. Maximum effort is invested for the fastest review of the article uploaded to the system of the journal. The author is informed about whether the article is accepted for the publication or not within 10 weeks on average after the uploading of the article into the system over the system. The author cannot withdraw his/her article before the end of this period.
13. The corresponding author of the co-authored articles will be the one uploading the article into the system, no contact is made with the other author(s) and except for the corresponding author, no one is informed about the process.
14. IJVUTS is issued twice per-year in February and August. This may change depending on the publication system of the journal, review process and technical issues. The journal does not assume any responsibility for any change that can occur at the time of publication.
15.IJVUTS has a right to directly publish any article uploaded into the system or sent for publication, place it into the line of articles waiting for publication, put it into the process of publication after corrections are done or refute it. Authors are regarded to know and acknowledge this. In this regard, they cannot start any initiative to put the journal under pressure and make any request.
16. We have a policy of screening for plagiarism.  In the journal, similarity scanning is performed using the software Intihal.net. This rate is expected to be at most 20% in the checks made during the pre-control phase.

PUBLICATION ETHICS
Publication Ethics can be defined as a self-regulatory mechanism that insists on integrity on behalf of authors, reviewers and publishers to establish higher standards of editorial processing. Ethical standards for publication exist to ensure high-quality scientific publications, public confidence in scientific findings, and respect for people's opinions.
• Honest researchers do not plagiarise.
• They do not misattribute sources.
• They do not hide objections they cannot refute.
• They do not distort opposing views.
• They do not destroy or conceal data.

Peer-reviewed studies are studies that support and realise the scientific method. At this point, it is of great importance that all parties involved in the publication process (authors, readers and researchers, publisher, referees and editors) comply with ethical principles. Our journal adheres to national and international standards in research and publication ethics. It complies with the Press Law, the Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works and the Directive on Scientific Research and Publication Ethics of Higher Education Institutions. Our journal has adopted the International Ethical Publishing Principles published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). It also undertakes to comply with the decisions of the Turkish Editors' Workshop.
• Press Law (National Legislation)
• Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works (National Legislation)
• Higher Education Institutions Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive (National Legislation)
• Transparency and Best Practice Principles in Academic Publishing (International Criteria)
• Turkey Editors' Workshop Decisions (National Criteria)

Replay
Republishing is the publication of the same article or substantially similar articles in more than one journal. The editor sends such an article back without reviewing it. Thereafter, the editor may impose an embargo for a certain period of time on the author who has attempted to republish, publicise this situation in the journal in which the author has previously published (perhaps by simultaneous announcement with the editor of the journal that published the previous article), or apply all of these measures together.

Simultaneous submission of the same work to more than one journal
Authors may not submit the same article to more than one journal at the same time. If the editor learns of possible simultaneous submission, he/she reserves the right to consult with the other editor(s) receiving the manuscript. In addition, the editor may return the manuscript without review or reject the manuscript without considering the reviews, or take this decision in discussion with the other editor(s) involved, and may decide not to accept submissions from authors for a certain period of time. It may also write to the authors' employers or take all of these measures together.

Suicide Prevention Control
Plagiarism is presenting the ideas, methods, data, applications, writings, figures or works of others as one's own work in whole or in part without citing their owners in accordance with scientific rules.
IJVUTS scans all submitted articles to prevent plagiarism. Studies submitted for review are checked for plagiarism using Intihal.net software. The similarity rate is expected to be less than 20%. The main measure of similarity is the author's compliance with the rules of citation and citation. If the similarity rate is 1%, but citation and quotation are not done properly, plagiarism may still be in question. In this respect, citation and quotation rules should be known and carefully applied by the author.
Plagiarism, duplication, false authorship/confessed authorship, research/data fabrication, article slicing, slicing and dicing, copyright infringement and concealment of conflict of interest are considered unethical behaviours. All articles that do not comply with accepted ethical standards are removed from publication. This includes articles containing possible irregularities and non-conformities detected after publication.

Forgery
To produce data that is not based on research, to edit or change the work presented or published on the basis of unreal data, to report or publish them, to show a research that has not been done as if it has been done.
Falsifying research records and data obtained, showing methods, devices and materials that were not used in the research as if they were used, not evaluating data that do not comply with the research hypothesis, manipulating data and/or results to fit the relevant theory or assumptions, falsifying or shaping the research results in line with the interests of the persons and organisations supported.

Protection of Personal Data of Participants
IJVUTS requires that all research involving personal or sensitive data or materials relating to human participants that are not legally publicly available be subject to formal ethical review.

Addressing Allegations of Research Misconduct
IJVUTS adheres to COPE's Ethical Toolkit for a Successful Editorial. Journal editors will take measures to prevent the publication of articles in which plagiarism, citation manipulation, data falsification, data fabrication, and other research misconduct have occurred. In no case will the journal editors knowingly allow such misconduct to occur. If IJVUTS editors become aware of any allegations of research misconduct related to an article published in their journal, they will follow COPE's guidelines regarding allegations.

Correction, Retraction, Expression of Concern
Editors may consider publishing a correction if minor errors are detected in the published article that do not affect the findings, interpretations and conclusions. Editors should consider retracting the manuscript if there are major errors/violations that invalidate the findings and conclusions. Editors should consider issuing a statement of concern if there is a possibility of research or publication misconduct by the authors; if there is evidence that the findings are unreliable and the authors' institutions have not investigated the incident; or if the possible investigation seems unfair or inconclusive. COPE guidelines regarding correction, retraction or expression of concern are taken into account.

Publication of Studies Based on Surveys and Interviews
IJVUTS adopts the ‘Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors’ and ‘Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers’ principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in order to provide ethical assurance in scientific periodical publishing. In this context, the following points should be complied with in the studies submitted to the journal:
1) For research in all disciplines that require ethics committee approval (ethics committee approval must be obtained, this approval must be stated and documented in the article.
2) In studies requiring ethics committee authorisation, information about the authorisation (name of the committee, date and number) should be included in the method section and on one of the first/last pages of the article; in case reports, information on the signature of the informed consent form should be included in the article.

Special Issue Publication Policy
A special issue may be published once a year upon the request of the Editorial Board. Articles submitted for inclusion in the special issue are first subjected to a preliminary editorial review. Then, they are examined for compliance with the journal's spelling rules and similarity screening is performed to prevent plagiarism. After these stages, they are included in the peer review process using the double-blinding model.

Editorial Confidentiality Obligation
The editors of IJVUTS Journal treat all submitted manuscripts as confidential documents, which means that they will not disclose information about a manuscript to anyone without the authors' permission. During the manuscript review process, the following people have access to the manuscripts: Editors, Referees, Editorial Board Members. The only situation where details about a manuscript may be passed to a third party without the authors' permission is if the editor suspects serious research misconduct.

Conflicts of Interest
A conflict of interest arises when professional judgement about a primary interest may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain or personal competition). We believe that we need to know the authors' competing interests in order to make the best judgement about how to handle an article, and that readers should know them if we publish the article.
Any interest, financial or otherwise, which may cause one to be conflicted in one's work, significantly impair one's objectivity, or give an unfair advantage in favour of any person or organisation. All sources of financial support received during the conduct of the research and preparation of the manuscript and the role of sponsors in the study should be disclosed. If there is no source of funding, this should also be indicated. Examples of potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include consultancies, salaries, grants. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed at the earliest possible stage.
IJVUTS has an established process for handling submissions from editors, staff or editorial board members to ensure impartial review. Such submissions are first referred to other journals. If this is not possible, the author of the submission is suspended from the journal. These submissions are reviewed in a double blind process.
The editor should not be involved in decisions about manuscripts written by him/herself or family members. Furthermore, such a paper should be subject to all the usual procedures of the journal. The editor should follow the COPE guidelines on disclosure of potential conflicts of interest by authors and reviewers.