Peer-reviewed studies embody and support the scientific method. It is crucial that all stakeholders in the process (authors, readers, researchers, publisher, reviewers, and editors) adhere to ethical standards.

By signing the Copyright License Agreement, authors agree that if the article is accepted for publication by Etkili Nursing Journal, it will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND). They also agree to transfer copyright to Piri Reis Journal of Marine Sciences and Technology (PRJ) if the article is accepted for publication. However, authors retain the following rights:

• Registered rights, such as patents and similar, beyond copyright;

• The right to use the article free of charge in all educational activities other than journal and book publication;

• The right to reproduce the article for non-commercial purposes.

Permissions for reuse of articles outside of these conditions must be obtained from the editorial office.

The Publication Rights Form must be completed, signed by all authors, and uploaded to the journal's online review system.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

Author(s) submitting a manuscript to PRJ are expected to adhere to the following ethical responsibilities:

• Studies submitted to the journal for publication must not have been previously published as a full-text presentation or article at a congress, accepted for publication, or evaluated in a journal.

• Authors must have an informed consent document demonstrating that they have the rights to use the data used, the necessary permissions for the research/analysis, or that the consent of the experimental subjects has been obtained. For submitted studies, the institution and ethics committee approvals must be stated, along with the institution's information, the date, and the ethics committee approval decision number. Ethics committee documents must be uploaded to the system during the manuscript submission process.

• If any financial support was provided for the submitted research, this must be stated separately, and the circumstances under which the support was received.

• The authors are responsible for ensuring that the manuscripts comply with ethical, scientific, legal, and other rules.

• Authors are expected to submit original work. If author(s) utilize or use other studies, they must provide full and accurate attribution and/or citation.

• Author contributions, abbreviations of their first and last names (e.g., A.B.), and their titles should be provided in the information section of the article, along with Conception, Design, Consultancy, Data Collection and Processing, Analysis and Interpretation, Literature Review, Writing of the Article, and Editing by Journal. Individuals who did not contribute sufficiently to the content of the study should not be listed as authors.

• Any conflicts of interest and relationships that may arise in all submitted studies must be disclosed in the information section of the article.

• Author(s) may be requested to provide raw data for their articles as part of the evaluation process. In such cases, author(s) should be prepared to submit the requested data and information to the editorial board.

• If author(s) discover an error or mistake in their published, early-view, or peer-reviewed work, they are obligated to notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor in any correction or retraction process.

• Changing author responsibilities (such as adding an author, changing the order of authors, or removing an author) cannot be proposed for a work that has already been peer-reviewed.

Editors' Ethical Duties and Responsibilities

General Duties and Responsibilities

Editors are responsible for every publication published in PRJ. Within the context of this responsibility, editors have the following roles and obligations:

• Striving to meet the information needs of readers and authors,

• Ensuring the continuous development of the journal,

• Implementing processes to improve the quality of the work published in the journal,

• Supporting freedom of thought,

• Ensuring academic integrity,

• Continuing work processes without compromising intellectual property rights and ethical standards,

• Demonstrating openness and transparency regarding publication on matters requiring correction or clarification.

Relationships with Readers

Editors must make decisions considering the knowledge, skills, and experience expectations of all readers, researchers, and practitioners. They must ensure that published studies contribute to readers, researchers, practitioners, and the scientific literature and are original in nature. Furthermore, editors are obligated to consider feedback from readers, researchers, and practitioners and provide descriptive and informative feedback.

Relationships with Authors

• Editors should make positive or negative decisions based on the importance, originality, validity, clarity of presentation, and the journal's aims and objectives.

• Studies that are suitable for publication should be included in the preliminary evaluation phase unless there are serious problems.

• Editors should not ignore positive referee suggestions unless there are serious problems with the study.

• New editors should not change the decisions made by previous editor(s) regarding the study unless there are serious problems.

• The "Blind Review and Evaluation Process" must be published, and editors must prevent any deviations from the defined processes.

• Authors should be provided with clear and informative notifications and feedback.

Relations with Reviewers

• Reviewers should be selected based on the subject matter of the study.

• They are responsible for providing the reviewers with the information and guidance they need during the evaluation phase.

• They are responsible for considering whether there are conflicts of interest between authors and reviewers.

• In the context of blinded peer review, the identities of reviewers should be kept confidential.

• Reviewers should be encouraged to review the manuscript in an impartial, scientific, and objective manner.

• Reviewers should establish practices and policies that enhance reviewer performance.

• The necessary steps should be taken to dynamically update the reviewer pool.

• Discourteous and unscientific reviews should be prevented.

• The reviewer pool should be comprised of a broad range of people.

Relations with the Editorial Board

• Editors should ensure that all editorial board members adhere to editorial policies and guidelines. They should inform editorial board members about editorial policies and keep them informed of developments.

• Editors should ensure that editorial board members evaluate manuscripts impartially and independently.

• New editorial board members should be identified as contributing and qualified.

• Editorial board members should submit for review only manuscripts that align with the editorial board members' areas of expertise.

• They should interact regularly with the editorial board.

• They should hold regular meetings with the editorial board to discuss the development of editorial policies and the journal.

Relationships with the Journal Owner and Publisher

The relationship between editors and publishers is based on the principle of editorial independence. According to the written agreement between the editors and publisher, all decisions made by the editors are independent of the publisher and the journal owner.

Editorial and blind peer-review processes

Editors are responsible for implementing the "Blind Peer Review and Evaluation Process" policies in the journal's publication policies. In this context, editors ensure that each article is reviewed fairly, impartially, and in a timely manner.

Quality Assurance

Editors are responsible for ensuring that every article published in the journal is published in accordance with the journal's publication policies and international standards.

Personal Data Protection

Editors are responsible for protecting the personal data of authors, reviewers, and readers.

Ethics Committee, Human and Animal Rights

Editors are responsible for ensuring that the rights of humans, animals, and the environment are protected in the reviewed studies. They are responsible for rejecting a study in cases where ethics committee approval is not obtained for the subjects used in the studies, and permissions for experimental research are not obtained.

Precautions Against Potential Abuse and Misconduct

Editors are obligated to take precautions against potential abuse and misconduct. In addition to conducting a thorough and objective investigation into complaints, the editor's responsibility includes sharing findings on the matter.

Personal Data Protection

Editors are responsible for protecting the personal data of authors, reviewers, and readers.

Ethics Committee, Human and Animal Rights

Editors are responsible for ensuring that human and animal rights, as well as the rights of nature in general, are protected in reviewed studies. They are responsible for rejecting studies in cases where ethics committee approval is not obtained for the subjects used in the studies, and permissions are not obtained for experimental research.

Preventing Potential Abuse and Misconduct

Editors are responsible for taking precautions against potential abuse and misconduct. In addition to conducting a rigorous and objective investigation into complaints regarding these matters, the editor's responsibility includes sharing relevant findings with the public.

Ensuring the Integrity of Academic Publications

Editors must ensure that any errors, inconsistencies, or misleading statements in their studies are promptly corrected.

Protecting Intellectual Property Rights

Editors are responsible for protecting the intellectual property rights of all published articles and defending the rights of the journal and the author(s) in the event of any potential violations. Editors are also obligated to take the necessary precautions to ensure that the content of all published articles does not infringe the intellectual property rights of other publications.

Constructiveness and Openness to Discussion

Editors must:

• Consider compelling criticisms of published works and adopt a constructive approach to these criticisms.

• Provide the author(s) of the criticized studies with a right of reply.

• Do not ignore or exclude studies with negative results.

Complaints

Editors are obligated to carefully review complaints from authors, reviewers, or readers and respond to them in an informative and explanatory manner.

Political and Commercial Concerns

The journal owner, publisher, and any other political or commercial factors do not influence the editors' independent decision-making.

Conflicts of Interest

Editors must ensure that the publication process of studies is completed independently and impartially, taking into account any conflicts of interest between author(s), reviewers, and other editors.

Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers

PRJ conducts its review process using the principle of double-blind review. Reviewers cannot directly contact authors; reviews and comments are communicated through the journal management system. During this process, reviewer comments on review forms and full texts are communicated to the author(s) via the editor. In this context, reviewers who review papers for PRJ are expected to have the following ethical responsibilities:

• Only accept papers related to their field of expertise for review.

• They must conduct reviews impartially and confidentially.

• If they believe they face a conflict of interest during the review process, they must reject the paper and inform the journal editor.,

• In accordance with the principle of confidentiality, they must destroy the papers they review after the review process. Only the final versions of the papers they review may be used after publication.

• They must conduct the review objectively, focusing solely on the content of the paper. They must not allow nationality, gender, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or commercial concerns to influence the review.

• They must conduct the review in a constructive and polite manner. They must refrain from making derogatory personal comments, including hostility, slander, or insults. • The work they accept for evaluation must be completed on time and in accordance with the ethical responsibilities outlined above.

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

PRJ is published under the open access policy.

PRIVACY STATEMENT

Personal information, such as names and email addresses, entered into the journal management system will be used solely for the scientific purposes of this journal. This information will not be used for any other purpose or department, and will not be shared with third parties.

ARCHIVING

• Metadata and full text of all articles published in PRJ are stored in Word, XML, and PDF formats, with no access.

In addition, all articles are stored and made available on ULAKBİM servers in Word, XML, and PDF formats through the TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM Database.

PUBLICATION POLICY

• PRJ is open-access, full-text, and freely accessible online through the Dergipark Index.

• Authors are not charged for the evaluation and publication of articles.

• The entire evaluation process for articles submitted to PRJ is conducted in a double-blind manner, with the identities of reviewers and authors kept confidential. Upon completion of this process, the corresponding author is notified whether the article has been accepted.

Evaluation Process

• Article evaluation begins with an application to the online article submission system. Authors upload the research Main Text file, the Ethics Committee Approval Form (except for review articles), the Institutional Permit (if the article is a case report), and the Copyright Author Approval Form.

• Language editing is requested from authors after articles submitted in English are reviewed by PRJ's language editors.

Author Responsibilities

• The statements and opinions expressed in PRJ are the responsibility of the author(s).

• The authors are responsible for ensuring that the scientific language of the manuscript to be published and the ethical requirements of the research conducted are met.

• If the corresponding author of the manuscript is notified three times regarding technical corrections and spelling guidelines and the requested corrections are not made, the manuscript will be removed from the evaluation process, and the matter will be communicated to the author.

• Authors are given four (2) weeks for minor and major referee suggestions.

• Referee suggestions must be highlighted in different colors on the manuscript, and any corrections made must be written as a single text and uploaded to the system.

• The author(s) will not be informed about the issue in which the accepted manuscript will be published.

• The publication order of accepted articles is listed in order of acceptance.

• The final version of the accepted manuscript is sent to the corresponding author as a PDF template for approval before publication. No changes will be made after approval.

• Author(s) will be notified of rejected manuscripts, and the referee's comments will be included in the information email.

• The journal keeps the article review period as short as possible.

Editor and Reviewer Responsibilities

• The editor rejects articles deemed unsuitable for publication in the journal, based on the editor's and section editor's decision, before they are sent to the reviewers.

• The editor reviews the decisions received from the field editors regarding the articles. Through the Secretariat, the editor communicates this decision to the section editors.

• The editor assigns the relevant field editor based on the subject areas of the articles. They manage the distribution and number of articles among the section editors.

• The Deputy Editor plans and manages the journal's six-month publication process in collaboration with the editor and section editor.

• The field editors monitor the submissions through the Dergipark system and forward them to the reviewers. Following the reviewers' responses, they inform the author of the article's evaluation results as soon as possible, within a month.

• Delays caused by the author in fulfilling the editing request are considered grounds for rejection.

• Each article is reviewed by two (2) independent referees, experts in the field, and those deemed suitable for publication are forwarded to the Editor-in-Chief after receiving the approval of the field editor. The final decision regarding the publication of an article rests with the Editor-in-Chief.

• Our reviewers are given four (1) weeks to respond to review invitations.

• Reviewers are given 10 days to evaluate the article. Reviewers who decline to review an article three times in a row or who review it late are removed from the PRJ Dergipark review pool.