Ordu University Institute of Social Sciences Journal of Social Sciences Research (ODÜSOBİAD)
This policy has been prepared in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, Scopus CSAB evaluation criteria, COPE–DOAJ–OASPA–WAME "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing" (2022), and the Turkish Council of Higher Education (YÖK) Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive.
1. Authorship and Contributorship
Authorship must be based solely on substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; AND drafting or critically revising the work for important intellectual content; AND final approval of the version to be published; AND agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. All four conditions must be met.
▸ Individuals who do not meet all authorship criteria should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section.
▸ Changes to authorship (addition, removal, or reordering of authors) after submission require written justification signed by all authors and approval of the Editor-in-Chief.
▸ The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version and have agreed to its submission.
CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy
ODÜSOBİAD uses the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) system to specify the individual contributions of each author. Authors must declare their roles — including Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data Curation, Writing (Original Draft / Review & Editing), Supervision, and Funding Acquisition — transparently in the manuscript.
2. Peer Review Process
ODÜSOBİAD operates a double-blind peer review process. All submitted manuscripts are first subjected to editorial pre-screening for scope, originality, and format compliance. Manuscripts passing pre-screening are evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with expertise in the relevant field. The final publication decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief.
▸ Reviewer identities are kept confidential at all times.
▸ Reviewers must decline invitations when a conflict of interest exists.
▸ Reviews must be objective, constructive, and respectful.
▸ The average review turnaround target is 45 days.
3. Plagiarism, Data Fraud, and Research Integrity
ODÜSOBİAD is committed to ensuring the integrity of the scholarly record. All submitted manuscripts are screened for plagiarism using iThenticate/Turnitin or equivalent software prior to peer review. Manuscripts with a similarity index exceeding 20% (excluding references) are returned to authors without review.
Malpractice Categories
▸ Plagiarism: Presenting others' work, data, or ideas without proper attribution.
▸ Data fabrication / falsification: Inventing or manipulating research data or results.
▸ Duplicate / redundant publication: Submitting the same manuscript to multiple journals simultaneously or republishing previously published work.
▸ Citation manipulation: Adding citations to increase citation counts without academic justification.
▸ Image manipulation: Altering figures or images in a way that misrepresents the original data.
When research misconduct is suspected, ODÜSOBİAD follows COPE flowcharts and guidelines to investigate the allegation. Depending on severity, the journal may issue a correction, expression of concern, or retraction.
4. Conflicts of Interest Policy
A conflict of interest exists when a professional judgment concerning a primary interest (the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (financial gain, personal relationship, academic rivalry, etc.). All authors, reviewers, and editors are required to disclose any actual or potential conflicts of interest.
▸ Authors must complete the Conflict of Interest Declaration Form at submission.
▸ Editors and reviewers with conflicts of interest are excluded from the evaluation process.
▸ Funding sources must be disclosed in the manuscript under the "Funding" section.
5. Ethical Oversight and Ethics Committee Approval
Research involving human participants, their data, or biological material must have received ethics committee approval before the study is conducted. Authors must state the name of the ethics committee, approval date, and decision number in the Method section and on the Title Page.
▸ Informed consent must be obtained from all human participants and documented in the manuscript.
▸ For studies not requiring ethics committee approval, an Ethics Committee Exemption Statement must be submitted.
▸ Studies involving animals must state that they comply with relevant national and international animal welfare regulations.
▸ Identifying information about participants must be anonymized; images, case details, or other identifying data require explicit consent.
6. Data Sharing and Reproducibility
ODÜSOBİAD strongly encourages authors to make underlying research data openly available wherever ethically and legally permissible. Authors are required to include a Data Availability Statement in all submissions.
▸ Data should be deposited in a recognized, openly accessible repository (e.g., Zenodo, OSF, Dryad, Figshare) with a persistent identifier (DOI).
▸ Where data cannot be shared (due to legal, ethical, or privacy restrictions), authors must clearly explain the restriction.
▸ The journal may request raw data from authors during peer review or post-publication to verify the integrity of results.
▸ Sufficient methodological detail must be provided to allow independent replication of the study.
7. Intellectual Property Rights
ODÜSOBİAD is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Authors retain copyright but grant the journal a non-exclusive licence to publish, distribute, and archive the work. Authors must ensure that all third-party content (figures, tables, quotations) used in their manuscripts is either original, properly cited, or used with appropriate permission.
▸ Plagiarism of any kind, including self-plagiarism, constitutes an intellectual property violation and will result in rejection or retraction.
8. Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions
ODÜSOBİAD is committed to maintaining an accurate and reliable scholarly record. When errors or misconduct are identified in published articles, the journal will take one of the following actions in line with COPE Retraction Guidelines:
▸ Correction (Corrigendum/Erratum): Issued for minor errors that do not affect the validity of the findings.
▸ Expression of Concern: Issued when an investigation is pending or inconclusive.
▸ Retraction: Issued when findings are unreliable due to misconduct or honest error, when results have already been published elsewhere (redundant publication), or when authorship has been falsified.
Retraction notices will be published with the original article's DOI link and clearly labelled "RETRACTED." The retracted article remains in the database with the retraction notice to preserve the scholarly record.
9. Post-Publication Discussion and Correction Requests
ODÜSOBİAD welcomes post-publication scientific discussion and corrections. Readers, reviewers, and researchers may submit comments or concerns regarding published articles to the editorial office.
▸ Post-publication correction requests must be submitted using the Waiver Form (Post-Publication Correction Request Form) available on the journal's website.
▸ The Editorial Board evaluates all requests and reserves the right to accept, reject, or redirect them.
▸ Responses to post-publication comments of significant scientific interest may be published as letters or brief communications.
10. Complaints and Appeals
Authors may appeal editorial decisions by submitting a written appeal to the Editor-in-Chief within 30 days of the decision notification. Appeals must clearly state the reasons for disagreement with reviewer or editorial assessments and should include new evidence or arguments where appropriate.
▸ Complaints about editorial conduct, reviewer misconduct, or journal processes should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief at odudergi@gmail.com.
▸ If the complaint cannot be resolved at the journal level, complainants may refer the matter to COPE.
▸ All complaints are treated confidentially and investigated impartially.
11. Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools
ODÜSOBİAD follows Scopus and Elsevier's recommendations regarding the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in scholarly writing and the peer review process.
▸ AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot) cannot be listed as an author. Authorship requires accountability, which AI tools cannot fulfil.
▸ Authors who use AI tools in the preparation of their manuscript must disclose this in the manuscript using the journal's AI Declaration template.
▸ AI may be used for language editing, grammar checking, or formatting support — but not for generating data, analytical results, or core findings.
▸ The use of AI in the peer review process is prohibited without the explicit permission of the Editor-in-Chief.
▸ All AI-generated content must be verified by the authors who take full responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the work.
12. Open Access and Long-Term Archiving
ODÜSOBİAD is a fully open-access journal. All published content is freely available online without subscription or access fees, in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).
▸ Article Processing Charge (APC): ODÜSOBİAD levies no article processing or submission charges.
▸ Published articles are permanently archived in DergiPark and indexed in national and international databases (TR Dizin, EBSCO, H.W. Wilson).
▸ The journal supports self-archiving: authors may deposit accepted manuscripts in institutional or subject repositories.
13. Reporting Ethical Concerns
Anyone with concerns about ethical violations or suspected misconduct in published or under-review work may contact:
odudergi@gmail.com
All reports are treated confidentially and investigated in accordance with COPE guidelines.
Reference Standards
COPE. (2022). Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.12
Elsevier / Scopus. (2023). Guidance on the Scopus Title Evaluation Requirements of Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.
COPE. (2019). Retraction Guidelines. https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines
Elsevier. (2024). The use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the review process.
YÖK. Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive.