The Black Sea Journal of Sciences is a peer-reviewed academic journal that is published four times a year in March, June, September and December.

 Prospective papers are expected to fill a gap in their respective field through innovative research.

Our journal employs a bilateral blind review system in which the personal identities of the reviewers and authors are kept confidentialed from one another, and whereby the parties involved are expected not to reveal themselves. With this objective in mind, parties submitting the file in question to the system such as the author, editor, and/or reviewer must handle the uploading of those files to the system with utmost care and attention.

The publishing team first examines (the) prospective papers in accordance with the criteria of the journal’s scope, as well as for scientific content and format. After the pre-review step, the papers are forwarded to at least two reviewers for evaluation. In order for a paper to be accepted, it must receive positive evaluations from both reviewers. Papers can be requested to be reviewed again if needed and evaluation of a third reviewer should necessity warrant it. The final decision is made by the editor.

Papers that are to be submitted for publishing are first controlled using special detection software in order to verify that they have not been previously published elsewhere, as well as to ensure that they do not include any plagiarized content.

Publishing takes between 2 to 6 months from the acceptance date.

The publishing or evaluation of manuscripts are free of charge.

KFBD sign on to the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), which promotes free access to research literature, and has adopted the Open Access Principles that clarified in this initiative.

The Black Sea Journal of Sciences is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

Academic research submitted to our journal is run through plagiarism detection software in order to check for any possible plagiarized content. Authors are expected as they declare that their work do not include any plagiarism. A report regarding this issue is sent to the authors.

The publishing or evaluation of manuscripts are free of charge.

This journal makes use of the LOCKSS system, which allows participating libraries to create a distributed digital archiving system, as well as allowing libraries to develop permanent archives for the purposes of protection and restoration.

 An author’s paper is entitled to copyright protection, and is to give her/his copyright to the journal upon its first initial publishing. One’s paper is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which enables it to be shared by others via permission from the author as well according to the terms and conditions laid out by this journal upon (the paper’s) first initial publishing.

The author is entitled to have a separate contract drawn up in which allows for her/his paper as it is published in our journal to be distributed without providing full authorisation (e.g., a paper’s being sent to the databank of an institution, or for its being published in a book, etc.)

 Authors are encouraged to share their share their papers via the internet either before they submit their work to our journal or as they wait through the submission process (e.g., to an institutional database or via their own personal websites, etc.). In doing so, this allows both for a fruitful exchange of ideas and feedback, as well as allows for the paper to be earlier as well as more widely referenced (see: The Effects of Open Access).

RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDITORS AND THE EDITORIAL BOARD

All editors of The Black Sea Journal of Sciences are independent in their evaluations and decisions in the journal. No external and/or internal factor can affect their decisions. If the editors are exposed to any kind of positive and/or negative constraints, they keep the right to take legal action against those involved in the constraint. On the other hand, editors are responsible for their decisions in the journal. The editor-in-chief is the only person responsible for journal content and on-time publishing. 

Editors and members of the Editorial Board of the journal are forbidden to share submitted materials with third parties other than section editors, statistical editors, Language editors, copy editors, design editors and referees when needed, and to use the submitted materials themselves. If there is a conflict of interest among an editor and an author or institution of the author in terms of cooperation or competition, then another member of the Editorial board is assigned to manage the evaluation process.

Editors provide peer review of submitted manuscripts by assigning at least two reviewers expert in the field. Editor-in-chief is responsible in decision of publishing a manuscript considering the importance of the manuscripts for researchers and readers, reviewer reports, plagiarism and copyright infringement as legal issues. Editor-in-chief can discuss with other editors and reviewers for his/her decision.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVIEWERS

Peer-reviewing of a submitted manuscript is the control of its scientific content, scientific layout and suitability according to the principles of the journal, and delivery of the reviewer opinion for unsuitable manuscript content to ensure suitability. The reviewing process not only enables reviewers to forward their evaluations about the manuscripts to the editors but also give them the opportunity to improve the contents of the manuscripts.

If a reviewer assigned for evaluation of a manuscript is of expert of a field of science other than the manuscript content, is far to the subject of the manuscript, is short of time for evaluation or possess a conflict of interest, then he/she should inform the assigning editor and ask his/her withdrawal. If the content of the manuscript fits the expertise field of the reviewer, then he/she should complete the evaluation and send the report to the editor as soon as possible.

Reviewers assigned for evaluation of manuscripts approve in advance that the manuscripts are secret documents and do not share any information about these documents with third parties except the editors involved in the evaluation. Reviewers continue to not to share information even after the manuscripts are accepted or rejected for publication. If it is suspected of using an idea in the manuscript that is sent for evaluation to the reviewer without permission, the flowchart of COPE “What to do if you suspect a reviewer has appropriated anauthor's ideas or data?” is fallowed. 

Reviewers should construct their criticisms on a scientific background and include scientific evidences in their statements. All comments raised by the reviewers to improve the manuscripts should be clear and direct and written in a manner far away from disturbing author feelings. Insulting and derogatory statements should be avoided.

Reviewers should determine quotations in the manuscripts used without citing a reference. Statements, observations, conclusions or evidences in published articles should be quoted with the citation of the related reference. Reviewers should also be sure about the reality of presence of quotations in the cited reference(s).

If a reviewer is in a situation by being involved in one or more interests with the author(s), he/she should inform the editor the assigning editor and ask his/her withdrawal. 

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE AUTHORS

Authors of original research articles should present the results and discuss on them in a proper way. Since the methodological contents of the articles should be reproducible, the authors should be clear in their statements and should not purposely report wrong or missing data. 

Authors may be asked to present their Raw data when needed (ethical cases etc.). Therefore, raw data of the manuscripts should be kept in safety to present if needed. The storage period of raw data following publications should be at least 10 years.

The authors of submitted manuscripts should be sure that their manuscripts are original or include cited references for quotations. 

It is not an approved way to produce more than one publication reporting on the same research. The authors should pay attention to such cases and they should not submit the same manuscript to different journals simultaneously. 

Only the following persons should be included in the manuscripts as responsible authors:

1) Researchers providing major contribution to concept, design, performing, data collection and/or analysis in a study,

2) Researchers involved in preparation or critical revision of manuscripts,

3) Researchers approved the latest version of the manuscripts and accepted its submission.

Contributors other than the above list (technical assistance, helpers in writing and editing, general contributions etc.) should not be involved in the authors list but can be listed in acknowledgments section. The corresponding authors of manuscripts should provide the separate listing of contributors as authors and those to be involved in acknowledgments section.

Authors should clearly declare any kind of conflict of interests in their manuscripts. Absence of conflict of interests about the topic of the manuscripts should also be declared. The most common types of conflict of interests are financial supports, education or other types of funds, personal or institutional relations and affiliations. All sources of financial supports (with their grant or other reference numbers) of the studies should be declared.

Authors should not use personally obtained information (conversations, correspondences or discussions with bystanders) unless they have the permission of their sources. Information about private documents or refereeing of grant applications should not be used without the permission of the authorities providing the related service. 

Authors are obliged to be involved in the peer review process and should cooperate by responding raw data, evidence for ethical approvals, patient approvals and copyright release form requests of editors and their explanations. Authors should respond either in positive or a negative way to revision suggestions generated by the peer review process. They should be sure to include their counter views in their negative responses.

Authors should contact with the journal editor or the publisher for an erratum when they notice an important error or mistake in their published manuscripts. If the editor notices the error, he/she starts the process about erratum on or withdrawal of the published manuscripts.