Journal of Sakarya University Faculty of Theology

The journal aims to contribute to the body of knowledge in the fields of theology and religious studies by publishing works with scientific merit at both national and international levels, and to become a leading journal in these fields.

The scope of our journal generally includes all research areas related to religion. Research and review articles on Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Eastern religions, and modern beliefs can be published. In addition to the core fields of theology, as long as they are related to religion, studies in education, sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, language, culture, literature, art, health, politics, Ottoman, and Middle Eastern studies are also included in our journal.

The publication languages of the journal are Turkish, English, and Arabic.

Author Guidelines

Journal of Sakarya University Faculty of Theology is an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles in the field of theology and religious studies.
The journal is published twice a year, in June and December.
The publication languages are Turkish, English, and Arabic.
The maximum similarity rate for articles (including those produced from theses) is 20%.
Articles submitted to the journal must be original, unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
If an editor submits an article to the journal, their access to the editorial panel is restricted. The editor follows all processes as an author. Once the process is completed, editorial privileges are restored.
Articles, including footnotes, references, and abstracts, must not exceed 9,000 words. However, exceeding this limit may be allowed during the peer review process.
For articles written in English, the manuscript must include an English title, a 200–250-word abstract, and 5–6 keywords. The first keyword must belong to the relevant discipline, and each keyword should begin with a capital letter. Authors are encouraged to provide a Turkish title, abstract (200–250 words), and keywords; however, these may be added after the article has been accepted for publication.
In articles, the ISNAD 2nd Edition citation system must be used for citations and references. Authors may choose either the İSNAD 2nd Edition footnote (author-title system) or in-text (author-date system) citation style.
Authors are strongly encouraged to use reference management software such as Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote for citations and references. The ISNAD citation system has citation styles for major reference management software, including Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote.
If required for the study, an Ethics Committee Approval Document must be uploaded to the system.
The Copyright Agreement and Acknowledgement of Authorship Form must be uploaded when submitting the article.
The journal operates a continuous submission system effective August 1, 2025. The editorial board conducts monthly evaluations of all submitted manuscripts, assessing each submission based on strict criteria including: compliance with the journal's formatting guidelines, adherence to academic publishing ethics, originality of the research, potential contribution to international scholarship, and alignment with the journal's publication priorities. Manuscripts failing to meet these fundamental requirements will be immediately rejected. During periods of particularly high submission volume, the editorial board may perform comparative evaluations of qualifying manuscripts, potentially rejecting those scoring below a competitive threshold.
The journal reserves the right to temporarily suspend new submissions without advance notice in response to submission volume or other operational considerations.
To ensure author diversity and provide opportunities for more researchers, the same author’s article will not be published in consecutive years.
Starting from 2026, book review articles will no longer be accepted by the journal.

Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

Authors

It is the author's responsibility to ensure that the submitted article is of a quality that contributes to the academic field.
The works must be original and based on research.
Although the plagiarism scan will be carried out by SAUIFD, authors are responsible for the academic consequences of plagiarism.
The articles should not be sent to different journals at the same time.
Authors should not resubmit the same paper previously rejected in our journal. In such a case, the paper will be rejected.
It should be made sure that other individuals, shown as co-authors, have contributed to the research. It is contrary to scientific ethics to add some who are not academic contributors to the article as co-authors or to put in order co-authors with non-academic criteria such as title, age, and gender regardless of the order of contribution.
It is assumed that authors who submit articles to the journal read and accept the publishing and writing principles of the journal, and the writers are deemed to have committed themselves to these principles.
Citations and references should be complete and realistic.

Referees

Referees should act with the awareness that they are the most basic determinant of the academic quality of the article to be published in the journal and should evaluate it with a view to increasing academic quality.
Referees should only accept the articles that they have the expertise necessary to make an appropriate appraisal. Also, they should only accept the articles that they can adhere to the double-blind peer-review secrecy and they should keep the details of the article in every way confidential.
Any information about the article examined in the review process should not be shared with anyone in any way.
Referees should only evaluate the correctness of the content of the articles and the appropriateness of the academic criteria. The opinions put forth in the article by authors may differ from those of the referees. The differences should not affect the evaluation.
Referee reports should be objective and moderate. Defamatory, derogatory, and accusatory statements must be avoided.
Referees should avoid superficial and ambiguous expressions in evaluation reports. For the evaluations that resulted negatively, the missing points and imperfections of the article must be shown clearly and concretely.
Referees must evaluate the articles within the time frame granted to them. If they do not evaluate the article, they must notify the journal within a reasonable time.

Editorial Board

Editors should accept the articles that may contribute to the relevant areas expressed in the scope of the Journal to the evaluation process.
Editors should not be in any conflict of interest with the accepted or rejected articles nor take advantage of them.
Editors have all the responsibility and authority to accept or reject a submission.
It is the responsibility of editors to keep the names of referees and authors confidential.
Editors should make the necessary effort to ensure that the articles submitted for publication will be scanned to prevent plagiarism, which is academic dishonesty.
It is the responsibility of editors to complete the review, refereeing, editing, and publishing processes of the submitted articles in a timely and healthy manner.
Editors should give priority to academic concerns and criteria when accepting articles to the journal.

P.S: The ethical rules mentioned above have been prepared according to the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics - COPE (https://publicationethics.org).

Price Policy

• Journal of Sakarya University Faculty of Theology (SAUIFD) does not request any fees for article submission, reviewing and editing processes, page-layout and publication (page or color fees).
• SAUIFD does not pay any fees to authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial board members.
• All papers on SAUIFD are free to read and download.
• SAUIFD sign on to the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), which promotes free access to research literature, and has adopted the Open Access Principles that clarified in this initiative.
• All papers on SAUIFD are archived with LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system through TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM DergiPark.
• SAUIFD does not accept announcements, advertisements, sponsorships, etc. due to its publication policy.
• SAUIFD is an open-access journal that does not request any subscription fees.
• We do not offer a reprint service for those requiring professional-quality reproductions of papers.
* All expenses of the SAUIFD are covered by Sakarya University.