ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
İmgelem Journal adheres to national and international standards of research and publication ethics. Our journal has adopted the International Ethical Publishing Principles published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Actions Contrary to Scientific Research and Publication Ethics
• Plagiarism: Representing the original ideas, methods, data or works of others as one's own work in whole or in part without citation in accordance with scientific rules,
• Forgery: Using non-existent or falsified data in scientific research,
• Distortion: Falsifying research records or data, falsifying devices or materials that were not used in the research, falsifying or shaping the results of the research in line with the interests of the persons and organizations receiving support,
• Republishing: Presenting duplicate publications as separate publications for academic appointments and promotions,
• Slicing: Inappropriately and inappropriately dividing the results of a research into parts in a way that disrupts the integrity of the research and publishing them in more than one issue and presenting these publications as separate publications in academic appointments and promotions,
• Unfair authorship: Including or excluding people who have not made active contributions, changing the order of authors in an unjustified and inappropriate manner, removing the names of active contributors from the work in subsequent editions, using one's influence to have one's name included among the authors even though one has not made active contributions,

Relations with Journal Owner and Publisher
The relationship between the editor and the publisher is based on the principle of editorial independence. As per the written contract between the editor and the publisher, all decisions of the editor are independent from the publisher and the journal owner.

Ethics Committee Permission
In our journal, all studies that require ethics committee approval must be approved by the relevant committee. Surveys, experiments, observations, clinical and animal studies and research involving personal data are subject to ethics committee approval. This permission must be clearly stated in the text of the article. Studies without ethical approval are not evaluated. Scientific research on humans and animals must be conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and ARRIVE guidelines and approval must be obtained from the relevant ethics committee. Studies without ethics committee approval are not evaluated in our journal.

Research Requiring Ethics Committee Approval
In our journal, researches that require ethics committee permission include the following studies:
• All research conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that involve collecting data from participants through methods such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, experiments and interview techniques,
• Studies in which humans and animals (including materials or data) are used for experimental or other scientific purposes,
• Clinical trials conducted on humans,
• Scientific research on animals,
• Retrospective studies within the framework of the Personal Data Protection Law.
In order for such studies to be included in the evaluation, the relevant ethics committee permissions must be obtained and these permissions must be clearly stated in the text of the article.

Plagiarism Check
Our journal scans all submitted manuscripts for plagiarism with Turnitin & iThenticate software. The similarity rate is expected to be below 20%. However, the main criterion is compliance with citation and citation rules; in cases of non-compliance, plagiarism may occur even at low rates. In this respect, citation and citation rules should be known and carefully applied by the author. If plagiarism is detected in an article submitted to or published in our journal, our journal will act in accordance with the COPE principles (Plagiarism in a submitted manuscript - Plagiarism in a published article).

Protection of Personal Information
All personal data sent to our journal are protected in accordance with legal regulations and ethical rules.

Protection of Intellectual Property Rights
Our journal is obliged to protect the intellectual property rights of all published articles and to defend the rights of the journal and the author(s) in possible violations.

Correction, Retraction, Expression of Concern
Editors may consider publishing a correction if minor errors are identified in the published article that do not affect the findings, interpretations and conclusions. In the case of major errors/violations that invalidate findings and conclusions, editors should consider retracting the article. COPE guidelines regarding correction, withdrawal or expression of concern are taken into account.

Complaints
If readers notice a significant error or inaccuracy in an article published in İmgelem Journal or have any complaints about the editorial content (plagiarism, duplicate articles, etc.), they can send an e-mail to imgelem@bilgitoy.org. Our journal follows the procedure outlined in the COPE flowcharts for complaints.

Conflicts of Interest
The Journal of Imagination requires early disclosure of conflicts of interest. Authors should indicate financial support and sponsors; if not, this should also be reported. Editorial and editorial board members' own manuscripts are referred to other journals for impartiality or their duties are suspended and reviewed in a double-blind process.

Principles of Research Ethics
• Integrity, quality and transparency must be ensured.
• Participants should be informed about the purpose, method, possible uses and risks of the research.
• Participant confidentiality and autonomy must be protected.
• Participation should be voluntary and not forced.
• Participants must not be harmed or put at risk.
• Research independence and conflicts of interest must be clearly stated.
• Written informed consent must be obtained in studies conducted with human subjects; guardian approval must be obtained in cases where the child and legal representative are required.
• Institutional approval must be obtained for studies conducted in institutions.
• In studies involving human subjects, informed consent and ethics committee approval must be specified in the method section.

Responsibilities of Stakeholders

Ethical Responsibilities of Editors
• Conducting an impartial and objective evaluation process
• Protecting the confidentiality of author and reviewer identities
• Intervening in case of conflict of interest
• Identifying inappropriate or unethical situations and taking necessary measures
• Overseeing that reviewers provide timely and qualified evaluations
• Initiating investigations for violations of publication ethics (plagiarism, fabrication of data, etc.)
• Retracting the article or publishing a correction when necessary
• To ensure compliance with the journal's editorial policies and ethical principles

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors
• To ensure that the study is original, ethical and accurate
• Identify all contributors as authors, do not include non-contributors
• Avoiding plagiarism, proper citation of all sources
• Clearly declare conflicts of interest and financial support
• If errors are detected in the article, informing the editor and participating in the correction process
• If human or animal subjects were used in the study, to obtain and indicate the approval of the ethics committee
• To prepare a file in accordance with the format and ethical rules of the journal for article submission
• To comply with confidentiality, consent and personal data protection rules in the study
• If artificial intelligence tools were used in the study, to declare this clearly

Ethical Responsibilities of Referees
• Objective, impartial and confidential evaluation
• Agreeing to review only articles that fall within his/her area of expertise
• Providing constructive criticism with adequate justification and explanation
• Not using the information obtained during the evaluation process for personal gain
• Informing the editor in case of conflict of interest and withdrawing from the evaluation

PUBLICATION POLICIES

General Principles
• İmgelem Journal is an international refereed academic journal published twice a year (July-December) by the BİLGİTOY Association.
• The aim of the journal is to contribute to science by publishing high quality studies of scientific importance. The journal publishes original research articles, reviews, theoretical articles, congress (bilgitoy) reviews and book reviews from all fields of social sciences, provided that they are written from a sociological perspective; if this condition is not fulfilled, only in the fields of Sociology, Political Science and International Relations. The publication languages of the journal are Turkish, English, Uzbek and Russian.
• The readership of our journal; Professionals, experts, academicians, researchers, specialists, master's and doctoral students, as well as undergraduate students in all fields of Social Sciences.
• Original, unpublished manuscripts that are not in the process of evaluation in another journal and whose content and submission have been approved by each author are accepted for evaluation. Article acceptance dates: For the July issue, January 1 - May 30; for the December issue, August 1 - October 31. Manuscript submissions are not accepted outside these dates. Late submissions should apply for the next issue on the current dates. The date restrictions regarding article acceptance dates do not include special issue publications. The article submission schedule and deadlines for special issues will be announced separately.

Copyright and Open Access Policy
The copyrights of the works published in our journal belong to their authors. Authors give permission for the intellectual work they submit to be published as Open Access by İmgelem Journal under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. Click here for detailed information.

Archive Policy
Articles published in our journal are digitally archived in LOCKSS. Articles published in our journal can be accessed free of charge at https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/imgelem/archive. Click here for detailed information.

Article Evaluation Process
Manuscripts submitted to our journal are evaluated within the scope of a double-blind refereeing system. All submissions are first scanned for plagiarism using Turnitin and iThenticate software; the similarity rate is expected to be below 20%.
The manuscripts that successfully pass the Preliminary Review and Plagiarism Scanning stage are reviewed by the relevant field editor. After the editor's approval, the manuscript is forwarded to at least two field expert referees. If one of the referees gives a negative opinion, the manuscript is sent to a third referee. In order for an article to be published, at least two referees must submit a positive report.
In the double-blind review process, author and referee identity information is kept confidential and all evaluation procedures are carried out in accordance with the principle of confidentiality. If revisions are requested by the referees, the evaluation reports are forwarded to the author and necessary corrections are requested. The revised text is reviewed first by the field editor and then by the relevant referee(s).
The manuscripts that successfully pass the referee process are checked by language editors for language and spelling. If deemed necessary, language corrections are requested from the author; the corrections made are reviewed again by the language editors.
The typesetting and layout processes of the articles that are decided to be published are completed and made ready for publication. At the end of the process, the article is published in the journal. Click here for detailed information.

Special Issue Publication Policy
With the decision of the Editorial Board, a special issue may be published once a year. The publication and evaluation principles for the articles to be published in the special issue are applied as in the planned issues. Click here to reach our special issue announcements.

1- Uzbekistan Special Issue
“Uzbekistan Special Issue” of our journal was made available to our readers on 26.10.2024. This issue was published under the editorship of Chief Editor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Musa Yavuz ALPTEKİN and Special Issue Editor Prof. Dr. Cumali ŞABANOV. Click here to reach our special issue.

Artificial Intelligence Policy
Our journal aims to use artificial intelligence in academic writing in accordance with ethical and scientific standards. AI can only be used for grammar, spelling and style corrections; it is not used in the evaluation process.
Considerations:
Transparency: It should be clearly stated at what stage and how AI is used; the author's statement is included on the cover of the manuscript.
Accuracy: AI outputs should be checked against sources.
Responsibility: All responsibility arising from artificial intelligence belongs to the author.
Impartiality: Conflicts of interest should be declared; impartiality should be maintained.
Confidentiality: Personal data security should be ensured.
Citation of References: Artificial intelligence is not cited in footnotes and bibliography; it is mentioned in the ethical statement.