Ethical Principles

The publication process in the Ondokuz Mayıs University Review of the Faculty of Divinity (OMUIFD) provides a basis for the development and distribution of knowledge in an objective and a reliable way. Accordingly, the processes applied are reflected on the quality of works belonging to authors and institutions that support them. Refereed articles concretise and promote the scientific method. At this point, it is of outstanding importance for all the stakeholders involved throughout the process process (authors, readers and researchers, publisher, reviewers and the editors) to be in accordance with standards about ethic principles. 

Ondokuz Mayıs University Review of the Faculty of Divinity (OMUIFD) expects all stakeholders to carry out its ethic responsibilities outlined below within the context of the publication ethics. The ethical duty and responsibilities below have been prepared by taking into consideration the guides and policies published by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) as open access (See COPE Guideline Turkish) 

It is a building block for an article to be published in a refereed-journal which is necessary for the development of the coherent and respected knowledge network. It is the direct reflection of the quality of the scholarly manuscripts of authors and institutions that support them. Refereed articles concretise and promote the scientific methods. Hence, it is significant to reach an agreement about ethic principles required for all the stakeholders, the author, journal’s editor, reviewer and the publishing associations:

1.Autorship

All cited publications must be listed in the bibliography.

False or misleading information and plagiarism must be avoided.

As a result of plagiarism control, articles with a similarity rate of 30% or more are directly rejected in accordance with the journal's publication policy.

Author must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere or is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere, in any language.

Actions contrary to scientific research and publishing ethics are:

a)Plagiarism: to show others' published and unpublished ideas, methods, data, writings, practices, forms or or works as part of or completely their own work without reference to the scientific rules,

b) Forgery: to produce data that does not rely on research, editing or changing the presented or published work by basing it on fictitious data, to report or publish them and to show the non-existent work quasi existent,

c) Distortion: to falsify the obtained data and research records, to show the methods, devices and materials not used in the search have been used, to take the data which do not support the research hypothesis into consideration, to distort the data or research results to make them appropriate to the related theory and hypothesis, to falsify or to manipulate the research results in accordance with the advantages of the people and the institutions that support the researcher,

ç)Multiple publication: to submit more than one manuscript which include same results of a research as separate works in examinations for associate professorship and academic advancements.

d) Dissection: to dissect the results of a research in a way that would destroy the integrity of it and inappropriately, and to use these results in associate professorship exam evaluations by making a lot of publications of them without referencing each other and to present these results as separate researches in academic promotions,

e) Undeserved authorship: to include people who don’t have an active contribution as authors, not to include people who have an active contribution as authors, to change the ranking of authors without a reason and inappropriately, to exclude the names of people with active contribution from the research during publication or in next publications,to make one’s name included – by exerting influence –as authors despite having no active contribution,

f) Other types of violation of ethics: not to state openly the people, institutions and organizations and their contributions to the research in the publication of them that are made by the support of those people, not to follow the ethic rules in researches done on humans or animals, not to respect the rights of patients in the publications, to be shared the knowledge with others in a research by the reviewer before it is published, to use the sources, places, opportunities and devices, which are provided or kept for scientific researches, out of their purposes, to accuse someone of violation of ethics in a baseless, injudicious and malicious way (Council of Higher Education (YÖK) Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Guideline, Article 8)

2. Author’s Responsibilities

• All authors should considerably contribute to the research.

• The statement that all the data in the article is real and authentic is necessary.

• All the authors should ensure article withdrawal and correction of mistakes.

• Article written in the Arabic language will have an Arabic bibliography. It is also necessary to create a second bibliography by latinizing this Arabic bibliography.

3. Reviewers’ Responsibilities

• The reviewer assessments are expected to be objective and critical.

• In case the reviewer answers the required clauses in the report positively or negatively, s/he must present both of them with justifications. The reviewer must certainly put forward “alternative suggestions” when s/he asks for correction or answers negatively. The authors are expected to make only a text-centered assessment, to avoid statements about the insufficiencies of the author/authors and not to use expressions that would destroy their reputations.

• The reviewer is expected not to answer the assessment criterion only as yes or no, to give details about the negative opinions and to state the justifications. Moreover, the editor does not send assessments to the reviewers in these cases so far as possible:

• To the reviewers with whom the author/authors previously published collaborative work,

• To the reviewers who helped the author/authors in their pre-readings,

• To the reviewers with whom the author/authors are known to have problems aforehand,

• To the reviewers who would benefit financially from the publication of the research

• To the reviewers who work in the same institution (the same department).

4. Editorial Responsibilities

• Editors have all responsibility and authority to accept or reject an article.

• Editors should not be in a conflict of interest about the articles they accepted or rejected.

• Only the articles that would contribute in the research field should be accepted.

• Editors should give support regarding publication for correction or withdrawal when mistakes are found.

• Editors must keep the names of the reviewers secret and must prevent plagiarism/false data.

Confidentiality is essential in the referee reports; therefore, referee names are not mentioned in the journal. The review process is a major factor in the success of the scientific publication. It is a part of our promise to save and develop the review process. Ondokuz Mayıs Unıversity Review of the Faculty of Divinity (OMUIFD) has to help scientific community in every case that is about the scientific publication ethics, especially when there are questionable, repeated publications or in cases of plagiarism.

A reader may file a report by sending an e-mail to ilahiyat.dergi@omu.edu.tr when s/he finds a significant mistake or error in an article published in Ondokuz Mayıs Unıversity Review of the Faculty of Divinity (OMUIFD) or when s/he has a complaint about the editorial content (plagiarism, repeated articles etc.). Since complaints provide opportunities for our development, we take kindly to them and to aim to give quick and constructive feedback.

5. Detecting Plagiarism

Articles sent to be published in the journal Ondokuz Mayıs Unıversity Review of the Faculty of Divinity are subject to double – blind peer-review process. Additionally, it is verified via a special program used for the detection of plagiarism that the articles were not published beforehand or do not include plagiarism. Articles with a similarity rate of more than %30 are considered as high percentage of plagiarism and directly rejected as per the publication policy of the journal.

Plagiarism Action Plan and Journal Precautions

The journal respects intellectual property and aims to protect and promote the original work of its authors. Articles containing plagiarism are against the standards of quality, research, and innovation. Therefore, all authors who submit articles to the journal are expected to comply with ethical standards and avoid plagiarism in any form. If an author is suspected of plagiarism in a submitted or published article, the journal's Ethics Editor reviews the work first. This work is then reviewed by the Editorial Board. The Journal then contacts the author(s) to submit their comments within two weeks. If the journal does not receive any response from the author within the specified time, it requests the investigation of the claim by contacting the university to which the author is affiliated. The journal will take the following serious precautions against published articles that are found to contain plagiarism.

1. The journal will immediately contact the university to which the author(s) are affiliated, in order to take final action against the related author.
2. The journal will remove the PDF copy of the published article from its website and disable all links to the full-text article. The phrase Plagiarized Article will be added to the title of the published article.
3. The journal will disable the author's account and reject all future submissions by the author for a period of 3 years.

This journal checks for plagiarism

Submitted manuscripts that pass preliminary control are scanned for plagiarism using iThenticate software. If plagiarism/self-plagiarism will be found authors will be informed. Editors may resubmit the manuscript for similarity check at any peer-review or production stage if required. High similarity scores may lead to rejection of a manuscript before and even after acceptance. The percentage of similarity score taken from each article. 

Publication Policy

• Ondokuz Mayıs Unıversity Review of the Faculty of Divinity (OMUIFD) is an academic, open-access journal which publishes only scientific research articles, book reviews, scientific meeting and symposium summary reports in the field of Islamic Studies (Scope: Arts and Humanities/Religion/Islamic Studies & Scope: Social and Behavioral Sciences/ Theology and Ethics).
In the research article, original and unique articles which focusing on the classical and modern problems of the field or requiring the methodical - analytical skills in the theoretical or practical field or searching for answers to the current/ actual problems of the field will be given priority.

In book presentation, it will be published in the book critique (review) form rather than simple presentation. For the principles of book critique, see the Editorial Preliminary Examination Form.
Articles which are sent to be published go through the stages ‘pre-control, plagiarism check, referee evaluation (blind review process) and Turkish - English language check. The manuscript that does not pass the pre-control and plagiarism check is returned to the author and is not put into process in the same publication period. The manuscripts that pass the pre-control and plagiarism check are put into process, which is fulfilled by at least two referees, as part of blind review process principle. Due to the principle of the peer review process, the names of the reviewer are not included after the 53rd issue.

• Whether the articles which are sent to the journal are going to be published or not is decided in the latest three months beginning from the deadlines, and then the author of the research is informed about decision.

• As a general principle, the articles which are decided to be published are accepted to the present issue of the journal according to the date of arrival; articles exceeding the maximum number for the present issue of the journal are conveyed to the next issue.

• Author can not publish more than one manuscript in an issue. Articles belong to an author are not published in the following issues.

•Articles or parts of it must not be published beforehand or submit them to another journal at the same time.

Fiscal Policy

• No copyright fee is paid to the author for the published articles.
• Article application fee is not paid by author.
• No publication fee is paid by the author.

Refereeing Process

• OMUIFD evaluates all articles as part of the principle double – blind peer-review.
• Names of referees are kept strictly confidential.
• Referee and author can not work in the same institution.
• The author can not know who the referees are, and referees do not know who the article belongs to.
• Editors guarantee that the publication process of the manuscripts will be completed in an independent and unbiased manner by bearing in mind that there may be conflicting interests between reviewers and other editors.

Publication Assessment Process

• Manuscripts which are sent to Ondokuz Mayıs Unıversity Review of the Faculty of Divinity (OMUIFD) are assessed by the editors. The items to be taken into consideration by the editors are described in the Editorial Preliminary Examination Form. (See Editorial Preliminary Examination Form)

• Manuscripts which passed the preliminary examination are sent to two reviewers, who are the experts in the field and are the determined by the editorial board. When positive reports are made by both of the reviewers, the manuscript is decided to be published and the author of the manuscript is informed about in which issue it is going to be published. The manuscript is not published when both of the reviewers opine negatively. In case one positive and one negative opinions are presented, by taking the content of the reports into consideration, it is decided to send the manuscript to a third reviewer or to reject it by the editorial board.

In the reviewer reports of the manuscripts which are sent for publication;

a. If the opinion “it can be published” is expressed, the manuscript is published in the relevant issue.
b. If the opinion “can be published after editing” is expressed, the manuscript is returned to the author for proofreading to be done.The author makes the corrections in a different colour. After editing, it is controlled by the editorial board whether remarks made by reviewer have been taken into consideration or not. If corrections are made by the author, the manuscript is published, otherwise it is rejected.
c. If the opinion is “I would like to read out after the corrections”, the manuscript is sent back to the author. After corrections, the manuscript is presented to its reviewers. Following this process, the manuscript is published by keeping in mind the reports made by the reviewer.
d. The author has the right of opposition to the reviewer report, provided that it is reasoned. The editorial board makes a decision on whether the manuscript is to be published or not by scrutinizing the report with the reviewer.
e. If the opinion is “it cannot be published”, the manuscript is not published.

Publication of research that involve human subjects (i.e., surveys and interviews)

OMUIFD adopts the "Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" and "Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers" of the Publication Ethics Committee (COPE) in order to create ethical assurance in scientific periodicals. In this context, the following points should be followed in the manuscripts submitted to the journal:

1) For research conducted in all branches of science that requires ethics committee approval (ethics committee approval should be obtained, this approval should be stated and documented in the article). 

2) In research that requires ethics committee permission, information about the permission (name of the committee, date, and number) is in the method section, and also on one of the first/last pages of the article; In case of reports, information about signing the informed consent/consent form should be included in the article.

OMUIFD is licensed under a Creative Commons Atıf-GayriTicari 4.0 Uluslararası Lisansı (CC BY NC).