1. GENERAL

Mustafa Kemal University Journal of Agricultural Sciences (MKU J. Agric.Sci.) aims to conform with the ethics statement of the Code of Conduct and the Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In addition, the editorial policies of Mustafa Kemal University Journal of Agricultural Sciences also follow the ethical guidelines published in American Chemical Society (ACS) and the ORI Policy on Plagiarism of The US Office of Research Integrity. Publisher, editors, editorial board members, reviewers and authors are expected to comply with these guidelines and be expected to accept.
All manuscripts submitted to Mustafa Kemal University Journal of Agricultural Sciences undergo double blind peer review. An outline of this process is available on our Publishing System.
When author(s) submit a manuscript for publication in Mustafa Kemal University Journal of Agricultural Sciences, the authors have a responsibility to ensure that they have not plagiarized nor using data (published or unpublished), belonging to others without written permission. Plagiarism checks are carried out on manuscripts submitted to Mustafa Kemal University Journal of Agricultural Sciences via iThenticate or another similarity check portals such as “Web of Science”, “Scopus” etc. When plagiarism is detected, the relevant COPE guidelines are followed, COPE flowcharts.

2. RESPONSIBILITIES
2.1. Editors


1. The Editor-in-Chief of Mustafa Kemal University Journal of Agricultural Sciences makes editorial decisions on all peer-reviewed manuscript for publication.
2. Editors and the Editorial Board members are responsible for making decisions on the scientific content of the manuscripts submitted to Mustafa Kemal University Journal of Agricultural Sciences.
3. Editors and the Editorial Board members must evaluate manuscript for its scientific quality, free from any sort of biased decisions based on discrimination of race, religion, gender, disability, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, geographical origin, or religion of the author(s).
4. Editors and the Editorial Board members must evaluate the submitted manuscripts objectively based on their academic and scientific value, free of any commercial or self-interests (i.e., conflict of interest).
5. Editors and the Editorial Board members must preserve the promoting research rectitude.
6. Editors and the Editorial Board members must not disclose any information on the submitted manuscripts before publication of the manuscript.
7. The Editorial Board members will not use content disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research without the author’s prior written consent.

2.2. Reviewers

All manuscripts submitted to Mustafa Kemal University Journal of Agricultural Sciences undergo single blind peer review. An outline of this process is available on our Publishing System. Reviewers should consider the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers before accepting to review a paper and throughout the review process. Reviewers may not undertake a peer review on a submission if you are unable to do so objectively.
1. Reviewers will keep all manuscripts confidential and treat them as privileged information.
2. Reviewers must provide a detailed, constructive, and unbiased evaluation report on the scientific content of the manuscript.
3. Reviewers should indicate whether the writing is relevant, concise, clear and evaluating the originality and scientific accuracy in their evaluation report.
4. The invitation sent to you provides a date when we require to have received your comments.
5. Reviewers will notify the editor about any financial or personal conflict of interest and declining to review the manuscript when a possibility of such a conflict exists.
6. Reviewers will inform the Editor if the single-blind nature of the peer-review has been compromised.
7. Reviewers must notify the editor of any violation of ethical treatment of animal or human subjects in their evaluation of the submitted manuscripts.
8. Reviewers must notify the editor of any considerable similarity between the previously published article and any reviewed manuscript in their evaluation of submitted manuscripts.
9. Reviewers will complete their reviews within the allowed timeframe.
Peer reviewers should provide an objective critical evaluation of the paper in the broadest terms practicable. Reviewers need to make a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief. Your report must contain a description of your reasons for that recommendation. If you believe the paper needs changes to be made before it is acceptable, please make suggestions on how to improve the paper. Likewise if you feel that a paper is not good enough and has no real prospects of being improved sufficiently to be published you should recommend rejection. You should also indicate if the manuscript requires its English grammar, punctuation or spelling to be corrected.

2.3. Authors

1. All manuscripts must be original work of the author(s). All the data or information reported in the manuscripts must be free from any kind of plagiarism. A zero tolerance approach will be taken to plagiarized manuscripts and they will not be accepted.
2. The manuscript should not have been published elsewhere or submitted for consideration to any other online or print journal(s) at the same time.
3. Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with manuscripts for editorial review, and should prepare to provide public access to such data if possible.
4. Authorship of a manuscript should be limited to only authors who have made a significant contribution to the work.
5. Authors will disclose any financial or other conflict of interests that might influence the results of the manuscript and acknowledge individuals or organizations that have provided financial support for the research.
6. Authors should state the funding source (a commercial company, charity or government department, etc.) for any type of publication within the manuscript.
7. Any potential conflict of interest must be clearly acknowledged by authors.
8. Proper acknowledgements of others published work reported (individual/company/institution) must be included by authors. Permission must be obtained and furnished from other publishers before, if already published data is included in the submitted manuscript.
9. Authors are asked to sign an author warranty when they submit an article for publication in Mustafa Kemal University Journal of Agricultural Sciences. The wording of the warranty is as follows: “By agreeing to this declaration you certify that the submission of a manuscript implies that the work described in your manuscript has not been published previously, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form and in any other language. The author(s) have obtained permission for and acknowledged the source of any excerpts from other copyrighted works; and that to the best of your knowledge your manuscript contains no statements which are libelous, unlawful or in any way actionable. The use of someone else’s ideas or words in their original form or slightly changed without a proper citation is considered plagiarism. Even if a citation is given, if quotation marks (“…”) are not placed around words taken directly from another author’s work, the author is still guilty of plagiarism”.

2.4. Publisher

1. An agreed publisher work with Editors of Mustafa Kemal University Journal of Agricultural Sciences, defining clearly their relevant roles, in order to ensure appropriate decisions regarding publication procedures and maintaining the transparency of editorial decisions.
2. An agreed publisher ensures the integrity autonomy and originality of each published article with respect to the publication ethics and rectitude and timely publication of content.