Ethical Principles
Inonu University Journal of Faculty of Education (UNIEFD) is a peer-reviewed academic journal that supports open access. Articles published in peer-reviewed journals are studies in which scientific methods are applied and ethical principles are taken into account to ensure impartiality. In the process of scientific studies; there are ethical principles that authors, editors and referees must comply with. In this respect, UNIEFD takes the ethical principles in the guidelines published by the Committeeon Publication Ethics (COPE)(e.g. see: “COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors ‘ and ’COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors”) as basis and expects its stakeholders to fulfill the following ethical responsibilities.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors;
- Authors are expected to be careful about the originality of the manuscript they submit. In this context, the manuscripts to be submitted to UNIFED should not have been published in another journal and should not have been sent to a journal for publication.

- Authors are required to comply with the similarity ratio rules determined by UNIFED and the “Similarity Screening” of the submitted manuscripts should be performed by the author and the “Similarity Screening Report” should be uploaded to the system together with the manuscript. In addition, all of the sources utilized must include citations.

- All of the people whose names appear in the author list must be the people who have contributed intellectually to the study. Author names and rankings are not changed after the submission of the study.

- If there is a conflict of interest between the authors, these should be communicated to the editor.

- Authors are expected to share the documents, information and data requested by the Editorial Board with the board during the publication process of the study.

- With the change made in the TR Index Journal Evaluation Criteria in 2020, “Ethics Committee Approval” is required for articles in all disciplines, including Social Sciences. (See: TR Index Journal Evaluation Criteria Article 8). In this context, authors must have obtained Ethics Committee approval for the research covered by the manuscript and must have obtained the necessary permissions from the institutions and/or individuals who constitute the data source of the research.

- In order to ensure double-blind review and impartial evaluation, authors should take care to keep their identities confidential during the publication process.

- During or after the publication process, authors are expected to inform the journal editor or the relevant publisher of any errors they notice in their work without wasting time.

- Inonu University Journal of Faculty of Education does not accept artificial intelligence tools as authors on the grounds that artificial intelligence tools cannot take responsibility. However, the authors are not against the use of artificial intelligence in their research. Accordingly, authors should provide detailed information about the use of artificial intelligence tools (ChatGPT, etc.) in their studies. It is mandatory to clearly state how and to what extent AI tools were used at various stages of the research, such as generating ideas, developing the research design, data collection, analysis processes and presentation of findings. Authors who do not declare the use of artificial intelligence will be assumed not to have utilized such tools.

Ethical Responsibilities of Editors;

- The editor should act in accordance with national and international intellectual property rights standards.

- Publish the steps of the process of evaluating the studies.

- Ensure that the process of evaluating and publishing manuscripts is qualified and fast.

- Establish an open communication with the Editorial Board, authors, referees and readers based on freedom of thought.

- It should make positive or negative decisions about the publication of the study by evaluating the manuscript in terms of compliance with the scientific method.

- Studies that are included in the scope of publication in the journal should be included in the evaluation process as long as they do not contain a major problem in terms of methodology.

- The journal should publish a list of writing guidelines to facilitate authors' procedures in the publication evaluation process.

- Keep the identities of authors and reviewers confidential during and after the publication process.

- Ensure that reviewers use descriptive and constructive language in their evaluation reports.

- Expand the referee pool of the journal as much as possible and keep it up-to-date.

Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers;
- The referee should only accept the review of studies that fall within his/her personal area of expertise and that he/she believes he/she is competent to evaluate.

- They should take care to evaluate the studies in an unbiased and unbiased manner.

- Take care to keep his/her identity confidential for the sake of double-blind reviewing and impartial evaluation. They should not try to access the identity information of the authors. If he/she realizes that he/she knows the author(s) of the manuscript when he/she starts or during the evaluation, he/she should immediately terminate his/her refereeing duty and inform the Editorial Board about this issue.

- The reviewer should take care to complete the review process within the given deadline.

- The reviewer should take care to compose the evaluation report in an explanatory and constructive language.

- The information contained in the study can only be used in the event that the study is published and provided that it is cited.
Publication Policy

Evaluation Process;

1. Manuscripts submitted to INUEFD are first subjected to a preliminary evaluation by the editorial board in terms of compliance with the principles of the journal. Manuscripts that do not fall within the scope of the journal or do not comply with the format of a scientific article in terms of content and form requirements are rejected without starting the refereeing process or some changes may be requested. Academic objectivity and scientific quality are the most important criteria in the evaluation of manuscripts submitted for publication.

2. At the evaluation stage, the manuscripts are examined through similarity screening and plagiarism detection programs (Ithenticate and Turnitin). The similarity index value of the articles must be below 15% (including citations and excluding references). Papers above this value are rejected without evaluation.

3. Manuscripts submitted to INUEFD in accordance with the publication rules are sent to two referees recognized for their work in the relevant field for evaluation. INUEFD uses a “double-blind” refereeing system in which the names of referees and authors are kept anonymous at every stage of the process.

4. Only one article by an author is published in the same year (same volume), regardless of author rank.

5. A paper will not be published in the first issue following the submission date, even if the evaluation process has been completed. If it meets all the conditions, it will be published in the next issue.

6. A maximum of 25 (twenty-five) studies will be published in one issue, taking into account the date of submission to the journal.
7. At most 20% of the total studies published in one issue can be from researchers working at İnönü University.
Possible Referee Feedback and Process;

a. If one of the referee reports states that the article is “unpublishable” and the other states that the article is “publishable”, the editor sends the article to a third referee and notifies the corresponding author(s) of this result via e-mail or the journal platform.

b. When one of the referees' reports states that the article needs “editing” and the other states that the article is “unpublishable”, the editor evaluates the article once again. After this evaluation, the editor either rejects the manuscript or sends it to a third referee and notifies the corresponding author(s) of this result via e-mail or the journal platform.

c. If at least one of the referee reports indicates that the manuscript needs to be “corrected”, the manuscript will be sent back to the author via e-mail and journal platform together with both referee reports. After this point, the author is required to complete the editing of the article within 15 days and upload the edited article to the journal platform. After making the changes, the author uploads the article to the system again. The uploaded article is reviewed again by the referees and an evaluation report is issued.
d. If the manuscript has received a correction from the editor; the author uploads the edited manuscript to the system again, the referees review the manuscript again and announce their opinions within 4 weeks.
e. If both referee reports indicate that the article “cannot be published”, the author is notified of this result via e-mail and journal platform and the article is removed from the evaluation process.
f. If the reports from both referees indicate that the article “can be published”, the author is notified of this result via e-mail and the journal platform and the article is taken into the publication phase.
g. The referees upload their review reports to the system within a period of 4 weeks.

4. In the manuscripts submitted to INUEFD, authors take into account the criticisms and suggestions of the Referees and Editorial Board. If there are issues they disagree with, they have the right to object with their justifications. In the refereeing process in the journal, only persons with equal or higher academic titles can be referees for the publications of persons with academic titles.

5. The peer review process of INUEFD can sometimes take a long time due to undesirable reasons. Under normal circumstances, the preliminary evaluation stage by the editor is planned as 1 week and the peer review process as 2 months. However, the peer review process may be prolonged due to reasons such as reappointment of referees due to lack of timely feedback from the referees. On average, it takes 6-8 months for a study to be uploaded to the system and published.

6. Authors/authors submitting manuscripts to INUEFD are deemed to have accepted the peer review conditions and process of the journal.
e. If both referee reports indicate that the article “cannot be published”, the author is notified of this result via e-mail and journal platform and the article is removed from the evaluation process.
f. If the reports from both referees indicate that the manuscript “can be published”, the author will be notified of this result via e-mail and the journal platform and the manuscript will be removed from the review process.

7. The copyright of the works decided (accepted) to be published in INUEFD is deemed to be transferred to İnönü University.