KARE Journal: Ethical Principles and Publication Policy
KARE: International Journal of Comparative Literature is peer-reviewed international journal semiannually published online by Erciyes University Faculty of Letters. KARE welcomes academic papers on comparative literature, history and ideas. KARE is an official academic journal serving the public interest and trying to improve the dissemination of knowledge all over the world. Academic works based on comparative research from social sciences (literature, culture) are all welcome by KARE Journal.
KARE Dergi acknowledges “basic ethical principles that apply to all fields of research in social sciences” identified by European Union (https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/6._h2020_ethics-soc-science-humanities_en.pdf). KARE Dergi is officially issued and designed by a committee assigned by the Executive Board of Faculty of Letters (Erciyes University). The assigned committee is responsible for the publication and advertisement of the KARE Journal. The committee consists of scholars from various programs of the Faculty, and they meet at least once a year to discuss the current and future policy of KARE Journal. The Committee agrees to follow unbiased evaluation process and apply the ethical principles identified by COPE. Therefore, KARE Dergi strongly suggests the reviewers, editors and authors to follow the ethical principles identified by Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE in their open-access guidelines. Please see: https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf. COPE identifies Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors; “Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors ” ; “ COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors ”).
The content and argument of the paper submitted to the Journal should be consistent with COPE. KARE follows the codes of scientific thought, ethical principles and public interest referred in COPE and EU guide. In case of manipulation, distortion, plagiarism and fabrication of data, the author is officially notified, and the paper is censored. The Committee has the right to request an explanation about the article from the author based on editor and/or reviewers’ reports.
Publisher's Ethical Responsibilities
Erciyes University Faculty of Letters is a public institution that should comply the research and education with the policy of Turkish Higher Education Council. KARE Dergi is an international journal of comparative literature that is published semiannually by the Faculty of Letters. The journal is open-access, non-profit publication that acknowledges and works for the public interest.
KARE Dergi is founded in 2016 by the Department of English Language and Literature and later published by the Faculty of Letters. By the decision of the Faculty of Letters Executive Board dated 21. 09. 2019 and numbered 2019.09.102 (https://edebiyat.erciyes.edu.tr/komisyonlar/Fakulte-Komisyonlari/Edebiyat-Fakultesi/5/33), the Committee is created to facilitate the independence of the evaluation and publication process. The Committee is responsible for the policy to increase the academic value and impact of the Journal. The Committee consists of chairperson, editor-in-chief, co-editors and members. The department chairs (of the Faculty of Letters) and scholar from Turkey and different countries are members of the Advisory Board of the Journal. The Committee is selected from scholars and researchers of various disciplines of comparative studies.
The editor-in-chief and co-editors are responsible Editorial Board. The Editorial Board works under the supervision, support and approval of the Executive Board of the Faculty of Letters. The Committee is assigned by the Faculty of Letters. Upon the approval of the Executive Board, the Committee is assigned for a period of 4 years. The term of office of the Committee can be extended for another 4 years. The KARE Dergi Committee has 10 members (a chair, a [chief] editor, a chair of publishing commission, three members and three co-editors). The pre-evaluation process of the articles submitted to KARE Dergi is carried out by the editor and co-editors.
Responsibilities of the Committee
• For each article submitted to KARE Dergi, the Committee is responsible for preliminary assessment, coordination of reviewing process, and publication. The Committee works with authority consistent with the public interest. To this end, the Committee values the dissemination of knowledge for the benefits of public and academic world. The Committee has right to take free decision to increase the impact and value of the Journal.
• The Committee takes decision to improve the quality of the research on comparative studies. The Committee strongly supports research and studies on comparative literature.
• The Committee takes decisions to ensure the determination and implementation of journal policies such as copyright, blind review, article evaluation process, and ethical principles.
• The Committee may assign the issue-editor when necessary and may also decide to publish special issues.
• The Committee values the copyrights. Therefore, the Committee has taken following decisions to protect the copyrights of the authors:
• For the articles published in the journal, The Committee (Erciyes University Faculty of Letters KARE Dergi Commission) has all the rights and responsibility to take decision for the protection of academic ethics and rights. The committee may take new decision to prevent plagiarism, corruption, systematic abuse (in referencing or citations).
• The Committee has the right to establish a writing standard for the articles to be published. The editorial board may prepare sample documents such as "Citation and Citation Form", "Author's Guide" and "Article Template" for the articles to be published. The standards may be updated when necessary.
• The Committee guarantees that the articles are published and archived online. The new and old issues are stored as much as possible in online platform (https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/kare).
Responsibilities of Editor, Co-editors and Issue-editor[s]
• The Editorial Board of the Journal highly values research ethics identified by COPE and EU Guide.
• The editor, co-editors and the editor of the issue are assigned by the Executive Board of the Faculty of Letters. The editor in-chief, co-editors and issue-editor should follow the academic and ethical principles identified. They should answer the questions by the authors and carefully follow the guidelines declared by the Committee.
• The Editor[s] should consider the relevance of the papers submitted for the evaluation. They should evaluate the articles’ originality, scientific, economic, social and academic values for the community, readers and related researchers.
• The originality of the article and contribution to the comparative studies are basic criteria for the evaluation. The consistency, coherence and scope of the argument in the articles are carefully reviewed by the editorial board before reviewers are assigned.
• The Editorial Board reviews the submitted articles and values positive suggestions and does not change the decisions made by the previous editor(s) unless there is serious ethical problem.
• The Editorial Board implements the blind review in the evaluation process. The Editorial Board makes sure that the identity of the reviewers and referees are confidential. The Editorial Board is responsible for the objective evaluation of the submitted papers. The evaluation should be completed in due time.
• The Editorial Board assigns the reviewers based on their research interest and academic publications. For an unbiased evaluation of the article sent to the journal, the Editorial Board makes sure that conflict does not exist between the reviewers and the author(s).
• If necessary, The Editorial Board informs the Advisory Board of the Journal to take further decision about the publication process.
• The Editorial Board is responsible for the execution and application of publication policy, guidelines and principles. The Board makes necessary updates to improve the process.
• The Editorial Board should attend the annual meeting of the Journal Committee. They may suggest new rules to improve the publication process. If any, they need to confirm and follow the annual—meeting decisions taken by the Committee.
• The Editorial Board also values the protection of personal data in the articles; protects the individual data of the author, reviewer and readers.
• The Editorial Board considers the public rules and protects human and animal rights. The Board seeks the explicit consent of the participants to the rules: The Board may reject any research lacking ethical committee approval (if the research needs approval).
• The Editorial Board takes measures against the abuse and violation of ethical rules; carefully considers complaints about academic abuse and ethical violations; conducts an objective investigation and shares the result of the case investigated.
• The Editorial Board protects the intellectual property rights of the published articles and defends the rights of the journal and author(s) in case of any violation.
• The Editorial Board takes notice of consistent criticism of published articles and may ask the author of the related article for further explanation.
• The Editorial Board considers the complaints sent by the readers and authors. The complaints are replied considering the research ethics and academic rules and regulations.
Responsibilities of Reviewers
KARE Journal is official responsible to the Executive Board of the Faculty of Letter (Erciyes University). Under this responsibility, The Editorial Board implements a double-blind reviewing process in which the author(s) and reviewers remain anonymous. In this system, the reviewers and authors cannot correspond directly. The Journal follows and is subject to rules and regulations identified by DERGİPARK (Journal platform created by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). The platform has certain system. KARE Journal follows the article management system designed and identified by Dergipark. The reviewers should register and do the evaluations online from the Dergipark website (https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/kare). The reviews are sent to the author from the system using review forms.
KARE Editorial Board asks the reviewers to consider the following rules when reviewing the research article[s]:
• Reviewer shall accept the review if the article is consistent with the reviewer’s academic interest.
• Reviewers should consider the research ethics (confidential) and academic principles. The article reviewed must be destroyed after the evaluation. The reviewer may use the article only after its publication. Race, gender, religious or political beliefs, academic and commercial expectations of the author shall not affect the evaluation process.
• Once the identity of the author is identified, the reviewer should resign from the evaluation. In case of common interest and conflict, the reviewer should resign the evaluation and inform the Editorial Board.
• Reviewers are expected to be kind and follow the academic rules in the evaluation form. The review is expected to be written in constructive language and criticism. The reviewer shall not use any abuse, shall not show any sign of insults or hostility in his/her evaluation.
• The reviewers should submit the evaluation form online and in time.
Responsibilities of Authors
KARE Dergi Editorial Board expects the author(s) of articles to consider the following rules:
• Author(s) shall not submit any article already published or submitted for review elsewhere, nor could they apply with more than one article at the same time.
• Author(s) should send original articles to KARE Dergi.
• Author(s) should indicate the sources (References) they refer in the article. The research ethics (declared by KARE), article template and referencing of KARE Journal should be considered by the author.
• Unless cooperated, the names shall not be included or referred as author. The author and co-author[s] shall not be added or excluded after publication.
• If any, the editor[s] should be notified in advance in case of conflict or common interest.
• The editor[s] may ask the author for further evidence and explanations concerning the paper submitted to KARE Journal. The authors should reply to the editor[s] questions.
• Author(s) are responsible to receive the necessary permission for data they use. The authors are responsible for the use of data subject to formal/official/private permission. No participants shall be used or referred without his/her consent (for researches that require such permissions). The authors must follow the necessary rules and regulations in such cases.
• Author(s) should notify the editor[s] about any inconvenient information, serious correction or retraction in the article before publication. If noticed after the publication of the article, authors should notify the editor at once.
• The approval [document or form] of the Ethical Committee should be submitted with the article, if needed. Author(s) are responsible to follow the necessary and ethical procedure of the research-data which include quantitative or qualitative methods such as experiment, survey, scale, interview, observation or focus group work. The Ethical Committee, the date and the issue of the permission should be on the first-last page and should be referred in the methodology of the article. The documentation must be uploaded to the system in application.
• Author(s) should provide ethical principles for data collection process (permission to use documents such as scale, questionnaire, photograph etc.) within the article. Such articles should comply with the copyright regulations for research and publication ethics and intellectual and artistic works.
• Approval by Ethical Committee is not needed for review articles. However, the author should notify on the first-last page of the article that the ethical committee decision is not needed.
Plagiarism and Reporting an Unethical Practice to the Editor
The manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Comparative Literature should be original works based on research and contain no plagiarism. The plagiarism report of each submitted publication should be checked by the author(s) through any official program (such as iThenticate software). If the Similarity Index (SI) of the manuscript is more than 20%, the relevant author should reduce the SI to less than 20%. Plagiarism reports should be uploaded with the article. Articles without plagiarism reports will not be refereed.
In an event of violation of any of the academic and/or ethical rules in the article published, the editors must be notified via email to karedergi@erciyes.edu.tr
Repository and Deposit Policy:
Kare Dergi follows DergiPark services. Using their passwords and usernames, authors can achieve deposit versions of their work through Dergipark system.
Peer Review Policy:
Initial Review
Kare Dergi follows double-blind-peer-review process. The author first submits a manuscript which is reviewed by a managing editor and initial decision is made regarding the general journal rules of the journal and appoints the manuscript to an area editor anonymously. The area editor issues a decision, when needed, advised by external reviewers. The managing editors approve this decision except in exceptional cases, such as unethical or biased approach by the area editor or the reviewer(s).
Authors remain anonymous to area editors and to reviewers, and vice versa. Attempts for identifying the author(s) of a submission is not allowed. The identities of all parties are known by the managing editors.
External Review
The area editor receives an anonymous manuscript and decides on the initial quality of the manuscript and assigns two referees for the manuscript. The area editor might use the help of a managing director for this process. The referees might decide to accept or reject the manuscripts through the ethical criteria and fills the referee-forms provided. They might also ask for minor/major revisions from the writer(s). The referees eventually send their reports to the area editor.
After the referee reports are obtained, the area editor might decide to accept the manuscript if both reports are positive.
Depending on the negative/insufficient reports received, the area editor decides on the necessity of a third referee.
Two negative reports results in the rejection of the manuscript.
After completing the review process, the area editor sends a confirmation for the final state of the manuscript to a managing director. The managing directors finalize and publish the manuscript in the related issue.
The workflow is directed through DergiPark system.
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