Lectio Socialis upholds the highest standards of publication ethics and expects every party in the publication process — editors, reviewers, authors, and the publisher — to abide by them. These policies follow the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and COPE’s Ethical Oversight guidance, the Recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by COPE, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).
All personal data of authors and reviewers are treated as confidential and are not disclosed to third parties except as required by law or for essential steps in the publication process. The journal oversees the whole workflow to ensure that everyone involved acts impartially and free of conflicts of interest. These principles should be read together with the journal’s Author Guidelines, Peer Review Process, Reviewer Guidelines, Copyright Information, Open Access Policy, Repository Policy, and Data availability policy.
Editorial independence, ownership, and funding
Lectio Socialis is published by Emrah Konuralp and hosted on the DergiPark platform of ULAKBİM (TÜBİTAK). From 10 October 2026 it is governed under its Governance Charter, which places the adoption of editorial policy, appeals against decisions of the Editor-in-Chief, research-integrity decisions, and the appointment of future Editors-in-Chief with an Independent Scientific Board that neither the Publisher nor the Editor-in-Chief can reconstitute. Until the Board holds its constitutive meeting, the Editor-in-Chief exercises its powers provisionally, within the limits set by Article 16 of the Charter, and reports publicly every three months on the progress of its constitution. The journal maintains complete editorial independence from all authorities, institutions, and commercial interests, and editorial decisions are based solely on scholarly merit and fit with the journal’s aim and scope. Where this policy and the Charter differ, the Charter prevails.
The journal is fully open access and charges no submission or publication fees (no article-processing charges). It does not depend on advertising or sponsorship for its operation and does not accept advertisements. No third party may influence editorial decisions.
Editors’ responsibilities
– The Editor-in-Chief assigns each submission to the editorial desk within whose scope it falls. The Associate Editor of that desk selects the reviewers and decides the manuscript, including desk rejection, requests for revision, acceptance, and rejection. The Editor-in-Chief does not intervene in those decisions except on grounds of conflict of interest, suspected misconduct, or an appeal.
– Editors evaluate manuscripts solely on academic value, originality, clarity, and relevance to the journal’s scope, without discrimination of any kind.
– The handling editor oversees an unbiased, double-blind peer-review process and decides on the basis of the reviewers’ reports.
– Editors avoid conflicts of interest. A manuscript in which an editor has a conflict (for example, from the same institution or a collaborator) is reassigned to another editor.
– Where research requires ethics approval, editors ensure that the authors provide documented evidence and that it is stated in the manuscript.
– The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the content of the journal as a whole, receives complaints, grants criticized authors a right of reply, and issues corrections, clarifications, retractions, or apologies when necessary. Appeals are heard as set out under Complaints and appeals below.
– Editors keep submitted manuscripts confidential and disclose information only to the corresponding author, reviewers, and potential reviewers; they do not use unpublished material from a submission for their own research without the author’s written consent.
Reviewers’ responsibilities
– Reviewers must be independent of the authors, of the authors’ institutions, and of the handling editor, and must provide timely, objective, and constructive feedback: an invitation is accepted or declined within fourteen days, and the report is submitted within thirty days of accepting. Members of the Editorial Board form the journal’s standing body of reviewers. (See the Reviewer Guidelines.)
– Reviewers should decline if they feel unqualified or have a conflict of interest, including competitive or collaborative relationships with the authors or their institutions.
– Manuscripts under review are confidential and must not be shared or discussed with others without the Editor-in-Chief’s permission.
– Reviewers should identify relevant published work not cited by the authors and alert the editor to any substantial similarity with other works.
– Reviewers must not use information obtained through peer review for personal gain and must treat privileged information or ideas as confidential.
Authors’ responsibilities
– The work must be original, not previously published, and not under consideration elsewhere. (See the Author Guidelines.)
– The corresponding author ensures that all co-authors meet the ICMJE authorship criteria, have contributed substantially, and have approved the final manuscript before submission.
– Authors give accurate accounts of the research, make raw data available on request, and share data publicly wherever possible.
– Research involving human participants or animals must be addressed in the manuscript, with documented evidence of ethics-committee approval (committee name, decision number, and date).
– Authors disclose all sources of financial support and any potential conflicts of interest.
– If a significant error is found in a published work, authors promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief and cooperate in a correction or retraction.
– Authors include an author-contributions statement using the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). For example:
Conceptualization: A. Author and B. Author (equal); Formal analysis: A. Author; Funding acquisition: B. Author; Writing – original draft: B. Author; Writing – review & editing: A. Author. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
– The author list is final at submission; any change (addition, removal, or reordering) must be requested by the corresponding author before acceptance, with the reasons and the written agreement of all authors. An author who changes their name may request a discreet update to their published work.
– Authors retain copyright and publish under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
Publisher’s responsibilities
The Publisher bears the legal and financial responsibility for the journal and has no authority over its editorial governance. The Publisher maintains the journal’s registration, identifiers, platform, and archiving arrangements, ensures that accepted articles receive a registered Crossref DOI and are preserved for continued access, and meets the journal’s costs. The Publisher has no power over the decision on any manuscript, over the outcome of a research-integrity panel, or over an appeal, and may not introduce submission or article-processing charges without the approval of the Independent Scientific Board. Where the offices of Publisher and Editor-in-Chief are held by the same person, that person exercises them separately.
Conflicts of interest
All parties — authors, reviewers, and editors — must disclose any financial, personal, or professional interest that could bias the review or publication of a manuscript. Perceived conflicts matter as much as actual ones. Editors and reviewers with a conflict recuse themselves. Members of the Independent Scientific Board and of the Editorial Board, and the journal’s editors, may submit their own work to the journal. Such a manuscript is assigned to an editor who is not its author and is not at the author’s institution; the author takes no part in its assessment and receives no information about its reviewers. Where the Editor-in-Chief is an author, the Chair of the Independent Scientific Board assigns the manuscript to an Associate Editor, who decides it, and the Editor-in-Chief exercises no editorial function in respect of it and does not consult its file. Every such article carries a published statement that the author held that office and took no part in its assessment. Articles with at least one such author may not exceed one quarter of the research articles the journal publishes in a calendar year, and the proportion actually published is reported each year.
Research ethics and ethical oversight
In line with COPE’s Ethical Oversight guidance, research that requires ethics-committee approval — including studies with human participants (surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation, or experiments), research using humans or animals (or their materials or data), clinical studies, and retrospective studies subject to data-protection law — must obtain that approval before the research begins. The committee name, decision number, and date must appear in the Methods section and in the end-of-article ethics approval statement. For case reports, written informed consent must be obtained and stated, and permission must be secured before using any scale, survey, image, or other material owned by others.
Plagiarism, originality, and screening
All submitted manuscripts must be original. Every submission is screened with intihal.net; iThenticate or Turnitin may also be used. Manuscripts with a similarity rate above 30% are not sent for review. Plagiarism (including paraphrasing or using others’ ideas without acknowledgement), self-plagiarism, redundant or duplicate publication, data fabrication or falsification, and citation manipulation are strictly prohibited. Quotations must be marked and cited, and all sources acknowledged.
Research data and reproducibility
Lectio Socialis is committed to transparency and reproducibility. Every research and review article must include a data availability statement in its end matter, describing what data underlie the article, where they can be accessed, and on what terms (for example, privacy or biosecurity restrictions). Authors should follow discipline-specific standards for data sharing and reproducibility, make datasets FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) with a persistent identifier, and cite datasets in the references with author(s), year, repository name, and DOI. Compliance with COPE’s guidance on published and unpublished data is required, and corresponding authors are expected to respond to inquiries about their datasets. Data should be shared only where it is ethical and lawful to do so — sensitive or personal data must be anonymized or deposited under restricted access.
Authors are encouraged to deposit the data, materials, and code supporting their findings in a trustworthy repository — the journal’s Zenodo community or a subject repository such as ICPSR or QDR for sensitive or qualitative data — releasing data under CC BY 4.0 or CC0 where possible and citing the dataset DOI in the data availability statement. Full deposit instructions and template statements are provided in the journal’s Data availability policy.
For questions about this process, contact info@lectiosocialis.org.
Use of generative AI
Authors and editors may use generative-AI tools only to assist with language editing and proofreading, not to generate substantive content or to replace the human contributions expected in the design, analysis, and writing of an article. AI tools cannot be listed as authors, and the authors are fully responsible for the accuracy and integrity of the text. Any use of such tools must be disclosed — with the tool’s name and version and the content concerned — in the Methods or Acknowledgements section. The tool used must be stable and publicly accessible (see AI Use Policy).
Allegations of misconduct
Lectio Socialis adopts a zero-tolerance policy towards academic misconduct, regardless of severity. Anyone may report concerns about plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data, image manipulation, undisclosed conflicts of interest, authorship disputes, redundant publication, or manipulation of the peer-review process to the editorial office at info@lectiosocialis.org or through the Contact page. Allegations are handled following COPE’s flowcharts. The Editor-in-Chief investigates, since the journal’s files are held there, and refers the case with the evidence to a panel of three members of the Independent Scientific Board, none of whom shares an institution or a co-authorship within the past five years with a person concerned or has any other interest in the outcome. Where the Editor-in-Chief or the Publisher has an interest, the investigation is directed by the Chair of the Board. Persons concerned are informed of the allegation and may respond before a decision is taken. The panel decides with final effect within ninety days and may direct a correction, an expression of concern, a retraction, the rejection of a manuscript, or no further action. The investigation is confidential until it is concluded; its outcome appears in the publication record as a notice attached to the article and is not published as an announcement. The authors’ institutions may be notified of confirmed breaches. Until the Board is constituted, an allegation in which the Editor-in-Chief or the Publisher has an interest is decided by a panel of three Associate Editors chosen by lot from among those with no interest in the matter.
Corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern
Minor errors are addressed through a correction or erratum. Serious problems — such as confirmed misconduct or major error — lead to a retraction issued in accordance with COPE’s retraction guidelines. Retraction notices are freely available, clearly identify the article, and link to it; the original article is retained for transparency. Where evidence is inconclusive, the journal may publish an expression of concern.
Complaints and appeals
Authors may appeal a decision on their manuscript. The appeal is lodged in writing to info@lectiosocialis.org within sixty days of the decision and states the grounds on which the decision is said to be wrong; disagreement with the reviewers’ judgement is not by itself a ground. An appeal against a decision of an Associate Editor is heard by the Editor-in-Chief. An appeal against a decision taken personally by the Editor-in-Chief, or in a matter in which the Editor-in-Chief has a conflict of interest, is heard by the Independent Scientific Board, which decides with final effect; until the Board is constituted, it is heard by an Associate Editor chosen by lot from among those with no interest in the matter. Appeals are decided within sixty days of being lodged, or the author is told in writing why not and by when a decision will be given. No decision may be appealed twice. Criticized authors are granted a right of reply. Complaints about the journal’s processes, its editors, or its staff are handled in line with COPE guidance: the editorial office acknowledges and investigates them and reports the outcome to the complainant.
Open access, copyright, and licensing
Articles are published open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, which allows others to copy, distribute, and adapt the work, including commercially, provided proper credit is given. Authors retain copyright. Because the licence is CC BY 4.0, authors may self-archive the published version of record in repositories and on personal pages with a link to the published article. See the journal’s Copyright Information, Open Access Policy, and Repository Policy.
Archiving and preservation
Accepted articles receive a registered Crossref DOI and are published and preserved on the DergiPark platform, ensuring continued access to the version of record. Under the journal’s continuous-publication model, each article carries the annual volume number (10 for 2026, incrementing each year) and a unique article number.
Governance, policy adoption, and transparency
The journal’s editorial policies, including this one, are adopted by the Independent Scientific Board, take effect on publication, and are reviewed at intervals of not more than three years; the Editor-in-Chief implements them and may propose amendments. Decisions of the Board are published in the announcements section of the journal’s website. The Governance Charter, the composition of the Board with each member’s affiliation, and the journal’s policies are published on the website and kept current, and each version of the Charter is deposited in the journal’s Zenodo community under a single concept DOI.
Contact
Concerns about ethics or this policy may be sent to the editorial office at info@lectiosocialis.org, or through the journal’s Contact page.