Volume: 26 Issue: 5, 10/20/22

Year: 2022

Research Articles

The scope of the “Sakarya University Journal of Science” comprises original research on all aspects of natural science, engineering and architecture. Original research results and scientific reviews in various fields of science and technology are considered for publication. The publication language of the journal is English. The review articles expect that scientific, technological, and current developments in a particular subject are reflected using a comprehensive bibliography, and a satisfactory evaluation is made. Manuscripts previously published in another journal are not accepted.

The research topics or fields covered by Sakarya University Journal of Science are listed below (Topics generally include but are not limited to): Computer Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Architecture, Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Agricultural Engineering and Food Engineering.

Sakarya University Journal of Science (SAUJS) aims to share scientific studies conducted in the fields of science, engineering, and architecture with national and international scientists and the public. Original research articles and review articles in science, engineering, and architecture disciplines are accepted in the journal. Original research articles are expected to contain theoretical and experimental results and should not be published in other journals. The review articles expect that scientific, technological, and current developments in a particular subject are reflected using a comprehensive bibliography, and a satisfactory evaluation is made.

The research topics or fields covered by SAUJS are listed below (Topics generally include but are not limited to): Computer Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Architecture, Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Agricultural Engineering and Food Engineering.

Submission Checklist
As part of the submission process, author(s) must check that their submissions comply with all of the following conditions, and submissions that do not comply with these guidelines may be returned to the author(s). In addition, all author(s) submitting an article must have an Open Researcher and Contributor Identity (ORCID) number associated with their affiliation account and register this number to the journal system.

The manuscript should include the article title, abstract, keywords; introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion; thanks; funding information, conflict of interest statement; author(s) contribution, ethics committee approval statement, research and publication ethics statement, references; supplementary materials (if any). Author information should not be included in this file. Document properties should be anonymized (The person who wrote the document should not be obvious. The Remove All options should be selected in the window that opens by saying File-Check for Problems-Inspect Document in your word document.)

You can use the below list to finalize your submission before submitting it to the journal for review. Please check the relevant section of this Authors' Guide for more details.
1. Is the article file name the same as the article title or the abbreviated article title?
2. Is the article file prepared under the template on the web page of our journal? (Sample article file)
3. Has the author information in the article been deleted?
4. If there is any other information in the article file that may suggest the author’s name, has this information been deleted?
5. Is a cover letter written? (Cover Letter)
6. Has the ethics committee approval document been uploaded? If there is no need for approval, was the "No ethics committee approval document needed" declaration form on our journal website signed and uploaded? (Ethics Committee Approval Certificate, Ethics Committee Approval Not Required Declaration Form)
7. Has the research and publication ethics declaration form been signed and uploaded as an additional file? (Research and Publication Ethics Notification Form)
8. Is the copyright agreement form signed and uploaded? (Copyright Transfer Form for SAUJS)
9. Conflict of interest/Common Interest Statement form signed and uploaded? (Conflict of Interest/Statement of Common Interest)
10. Is the author contribution form signed and uploaded? (Author Contribution Form)
Except for the Author Contribution Form and Conflict of Interest/Common Interest Statement, the above forms must be uploaded by all the author(s) or signed by the corresponding author only. The author contribution form and the Conflict of Interest/Common Interest Statement must be signed by all author(s).

All forms must be signed, scanned, and uploaded as PDF file to the journal system.
Manuscript should be submitted as Word file.

It is sufficient to submit only the English version of the forms written in both languages. Turkish forms are for informational purposes only.

Submission Declaration
Submission of an article means that the work has not been published before, is not considered for publication elsewhere, its publication has been expressly approved by all the author(s) and the responsible authorities in the place where the work was done, in the same form without the written consent of the copyright holder, if accepted, it warrants that it will not be published elsewhere, including electronically in English or any other language. Your article can be checked by the authenticity detection service Ithenticate similarity check to verify authenticity.

Use of Inclusive Language
Inclusive language accepts diversity, respects all people, is sensitive to differences and promotes equal opportunities. Content should not make any assumptions about the beliefs or commitments of any reader; contain nothing that could imply one individual's superiority over another based on age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, disability or health condition, and use inclusive language throughout. Authors should ensure that the manuscript is free of bias, stereotypes, slang, dominant culture references, and/or cultural assumptions. Unless relevant and applicable, we recommend that you avoid using identifiers that refer to personal characteristics such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, disability, or health status. These guidelines are provided as a reference point to help determine appropriate language but are by no means exhaustive or definitive.

Changes to Authorship
Authors are expected to carefully review the list and order of author(s) before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of original submission. Any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the list of authors should be made only before the article is accepted and only if approved by the journal Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must obtain from the corresponding author the following: (a) the reason for the change in the list of authors, and (b) written confirmation (email, letter) from all author(s) that they agree to include, remove or re-edit the list of authors. In the case of adding or removing author(s), this needs confirmation of the added or removed author.

The editor will consider adding, deleting or rearranging the author(s) after the article has been accepted, in only exceptional cases. While the editor is evaluating the request, the article’s publication will be stopped. If the article has been previously published in an online issue, requests approved by the Editor will result in a correction.

Language
The text should be free of spelling and grammatical errors and written in good English.

Submission of Articles
Our online submission system guides you step-by-step through the process of entering your article details and uploading your files. Editable files are required to string your article for final publication. All correspondence, including notification of the editorial decision and revision requests, is sent by e-mail.

To submit your articles to SAUJS
https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/journal/1115/submission/step/manuscript/new.

Referee Suggestion
Potential referee(s) may be suggested to evaluate the submitted article. Names and institutional email information of proposed referees should be provided. Referees at the same institution or have co-authored or collaborated in the past three years should not be recommended. In addition, potential referees from different countries/regions may be recommended to evaluate the study objectively and to ensure scientific rigor. The editor decides whether to invite the suggested referees or not. Editors do not invite referees who have a potential conflict of interest or common interest with the author(s).

Formatting Requirements
There are no strict formatting requirements, but all articles should contain the essential elements needed to convey your article. The article should be divided into sections with different main headings and each section heading should be numbered. Section titles should be written in Bold Font. Numbering should start from 1 for the main sections. All main headings (except Abstract, Acknowledgments and References) should continue as 2., 3., .... Secondary headings should continue as 1.1., 1.2., 1.3., etc in accordance with the main section numbering. The first letters of the words for the second headings must begin with a capital letter. The third headings should continue as 1.1.1., 1.1.2., 1.1.3., ... in accordance with the second headings. Only the first letter of the first word for the third heading should be capitalized. In addition, supplementary materials (if any), acknowledgments, funding information, conflict of interest/common interest statement, author(s) contribution, ethics committee approval statement, research and publication ethics statement should be added after the bibliography.

Referee Evaluation
The editor will first evaluate all studies in terms of suitability for the journal. Applicable articles are usually sent to at least two independent expert referees to assess the article’s scientific quality. The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of the articles. The editor's decision is firm. Editors are not involved in decisions about articles written by them or their family members or close associates or related to products or services that the editor is interested in. Any such submission is subject to all of the journal's usual procedures and is peer-reviewed independently of the relevant editor and research groups.


ARTICLE STRUCTURE

Please read the spelling rules first. Research articles to be published in SAUJS should not be longer than 20 pages, including references, appendices, figures, and tables, and review articles should not be longer than 30 pages. Tables and figures should be added directly to the article near where they are cited. Both tables and figures should be numbered sequentially. Tables and Figures should not be renumbered for each section in the article. The article should be written in Microsoft Word. It is important that authors follow the instructions.

You can find more details and suggestions on formatting an article in the author guide below, presented in a typical article style.

This document is adapted from previous style guides used for “Sakarya University Journal of Science (SAUJS)”. Please write your articles using this style guide.

Page Limit
Research articles to be published in SAUJS should not be longer than 20 pages, including references, appendices, figures, and tables, and review articles should not be longer than 30 pages. The abstract should not exceed 300 words.

Spelling and Grammar
Please check your document for spelling and grammar before submitting it.

Page Margins
The first page containing the Title and Abstract should be 5 cm from the top and 2.5 cm from the bottom, left and right. Left and right margins for other pages should be 1.5 cm and others 2.5 cm, and the text should be justify to both sides. This guide is a sample file for all these requirements. It is recommended that you hyphenate words to achieve more even word spacing.

Line Spacing
The article’s main text should be single-spaced and fully justified in 12-point Times New Roman font. Do not leave a single line space between paragraphs, and do not indent the first line of a new paragraph. Use a space after punctuation marks such as periods, commas, semicolons, and colons. Do not use spaces after dots in abbreviations (for example, i.e., etc., U.S.).

Titles
For the main headings, 12 point Times New Roman bold font, all letters should be capitalized and centered. Use 12 pt line before the main headings and 18 pt line after the main headings. For second headings, use 12-point Times New Roman font and capitalize the first letter of the first word. For third headings, use 12-point Times New Roman font, and only the first letter of the first word should be capitalized.

Header/Footer
Please do not put headers or footers in your article.

Title Page Information
• Title of the Article
Do not use a separate title page. For the title of the article, use 14-point Times New Roman bold font with only the first letter of each word (excluding the conjunctions) capitalized and centered.
• Authors
Do not write any information about the author(s) at this stage. Author information will be requested after your submission is accepted for publication.
• Abstract
No more than 300 words should be used in the abstract to indicate the nature of the subject and briefly explain the article’s findings. A summary is usually presented separately from the article, so it should be understandable. References should not be used in the abstract. In addition, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided. If necessary, they should be defined where they are first mentioned in abstract.
• Keywords
No more than five keywords should be written immediately after the abstract. Only abbreviations that are strictly defined in the related field may be used. Keywords will be used for indexing purposes. Keywords are recommended to be chosen from the Science Terms of Turkey (http://www.bilimterimleri.com).

Article Structure
The body of the article should be separated from the abstract by two-line spaces. The "body text" style used here is a justified 12-point Times New Roman font. Single line spacing (12 points) should be left between paragraphs. The first word of a new paragraph should not be indented.

Footnotes, Figures and Tables
• Footnotes
Footnotes are not recommended, but can be used when necessary. They should be numbered consecutively and placed at the bottom of the page on which they appear, separated from the body of the text by a line 25 mm. A line spacing should separate two footnotes on the same page. Make sure you follow the margin requirements at the bottom of the page. Footnotes should not be added to the equations.
• Figures and Tables
11-point Times New Roman font should be used for figure and table captions. Figures and tables should be placed immediately after the first citation in the text and should be placed so that they can be easily referenced while reading the text.

Figure captions should be placed under the figure, centered and not bold; no dots should be left after the figure number or at the end of the line.

Table headings should be placed at the top of the table, centered and not bold, no dots should be left after the table number or at the end of the line. The first line of the table should include explanations.

For both table and figure captions, only the first letter of the first word should be capitalized unless a word necessarily needs to be capitalized. Bold fonts should not be used. Dots should not be used after table and figure numbers and at the end of lines. Tables should be centered across the entire page if possible. Entries in the cells of the table should be left justified. The font used for cell entries is left to the discretion of the author. In general, it is recommended to minimize the number of vertical lines and use only horizontal lines whenever possible.

In the tables that continue on the next page, the phrase (continue) should be added in parentheses after the table title. Explanations should be included in the first line of the continued tables.

Reference Citations
Please use the IEEE Reference to format your references: https://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf

Please align your references to the left and do not use IEEE preferred hanging indents. Books, journals, and other references should be consecutively numbered in the main document text.

Formulas
Please write math equations as editable text, not as images. All formulas should be aligned, and numbered sequentially on separate lines. All symbols must be adequately defined. Identification numbers should be written on the right side of the formula. Simple formulas should be presented in line with standard text whenever possible, and small fractional terms should use a “/” instead of a horizontal line (for example, X/Y).

Supplementary File
If a supplementary file is required in the study, it should follow the article’s main text and come before the references. All accompanying tables and figures should be mentioned in the text. Table and figure numbers presented should be used as “Table S1” and “Figure S1” in the supplementary file.

After the annexes, other statements should be written in the following order.

Acknowledgments
If it is desired to thank any person who contributed to the study, this should be written under "Acknowledgments" before the references.

Funding
It is necessary to indicate the sources providing financial support for the conduct of the research and/or the preparation of the article. If the funding source(s) does not have such involvement, it is also recommended to indicate this.

Full details of funding sources should be included under the FUNDING heading as follows:
This study is supported by Sakarya University Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit. Project Number: 2016-01-02-001.

If support is not received, under this heading "Author(s) have received no financial support for the research, authorship or publication of this work." statement must be written.

The Declaration of Conflict of Interest/ Common Interest
Corresponding author(s) must disclose, on behalf of all author(s) of an article, any financial and personal relationships with other individuals or organizations that may improperly influence their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest can be personal, business, political, academic or financial. All author(s), including those who have no interests to declare (who may state that they have nothing to declare), should provide relevant information to the corresponding author. For example;
In accordance with conflict of interest policy and my ethical obligation as a researcher, I declare that ……… [company, institution, person] may be affected by the research reported in the accompanying document. I have fully disclosed this conflict of interest situation to the journal and I have an approved plan for managing potential conflicts."
If no conflict of interest situation is disclosed, we will add the following statement to your article at the time of publication: "No potential conflict of interest was declared by the authors".

Author Contributions
For transparency, the author(s) are expected to submit an author statement file summarizing the respective author(s) individual contributions to the article. Under this heading, "Authors contributed equally to the study" or "1st author contributed 60%, 2nd author contributed 40%." statements may be presented.

The Declaration of Ethics Committee Approval
If the study requires ethical committee permission, the committee’s name, the date and the number of the approval should be stated under this heading. In addition, information about the permission should be included in the METHOD section. A copy of the permission obtained should be uploaded as an ETHICS COMMITTEE APPROVAL DOCUMENT at the article submission stage.

If the study does not require ethics committee approval, the statement "This study does not require ethics committee approval or any special permission" should be included under this heading. In addition, the ETHICS COMMITTEE PERMISSION IS NOT NEEDED DECLARATION FORM must be signed by the corresponding author and uploaded instead of the ETHICS COMMITTEE APPROVAL CERTIFICATE that will be requested at the stage of article submission.

The Declaration of Research and Publication Ethics
Under this title, the author(s) states, "In the writing process of this study, international scientific, ethical and citation rules were followed, and no falsification was made on the collected data. Sakarya University Institute of Science Journal and editorial board bear no responsibility for all ethical violations that may be encountered. All responsibility belongs to the corresponding author and this study has not been evaluated in any academic publications other than Sakarya University Journal of Science.

In addition, the RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION ETHICS DECLARATION FORM regarding this statement should be signed by the responsible author and uploaded as an additional file while submitting the article.

Copyright Transfer Form
Authors are requested to transfer the copyrights in their articles to SAUJS prior to publication. The corresponding author is expected to upload a 'Copyright Transfer Form' during the article submission phase. This gives us the right to reproduce your article and present it to readers.

References
Literature references should be numbered consecutively and grouped under the article's heading “REFERENCES” at the end. References should be cited in the text by giving the corresponding numbers in the reference list in square brackets.

There are standard reference formats for most document types. Below are examples of the most common types of documents you might want to refer to. Each of the following gives a recommended standard format for reference, followed by examples for different document types.

• Book
[Ref number] Author’s initials. Author’s Surname, Book Title, edition (if not first). Place of publication: Publisher, Year.
[1] I.A. Glover and P.M. Grant, Digital Communications, 3rd ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2009.
• Book chapter
[Ref number] Author’s initials. Author’s Surname, “Title of chapter in book,” in Book Title, edition (if not first), Editor’s initials. Editor’s Surname, Ed. Place of publication: Publisher, Year, page numbers.
[2] C. W. Li and G. J. Wang, "MEMS manufacturing techniques for tissue scaffolding devices," in Mems for Biomedical Applications, S. Bhansali and A. Vasudev, Eds. Cambridge: Woodhead, 2012, pp. 192-217.
• Journal article
[Ref number] Author’s initials. Author’s Surname, “Title of article,” Title of journal abbreviated in Italics, vol. number, issue
number, page numbers, Abbreviated Month Year.
[3] F. Yan, Y. Gu, Y. Wang, C. M. Wang, X. Y. Hu, H. X. Peng, et al., "Study on the interaction mechanism between laser and rock during perforation," Optics and Laser Technology, vol. 54, pp. 303-308, Dec 2013.
Note: the above example article is from a journal which does not use issue numbers, so they are not included in the reference.
• Conference papers
[Ref number] Author’s initials. Author’s Surname, “Title of paper,” in Name of Conference, Location, Year, pp. xxx.
[4] S. Adachi, T. Horio, T. Suzuki. "Intense vacuum-ultraviolet single-order harmonic pulse by a deep-ultraviolet driving laser," in Conf. Lasers and Electro-Optics, San Jose, CA, 2012, pp.2118-2120.
Standard abbreviations may be applied to the title of the conference. For a table of abbreviations go to: http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf
• Patents
[Ref number] Author’s initials. Author’s Surname, “Title of patent,” Country where patent is registered. Patent number, Abbrev of Month Day Year.
[5] J. P. Wilkinson, “Nonlinear resonant circuit devices,” U.S. Patent 3 624 125, July 16 1990.
Note: Use “issued date” if several dates are given.
• Theses/Dissertations
[Ref number] Author’s initials. Author’s Surname, “Title of thesis,” Designation type, Abbrev. Dept., Abbrev. Univ., City of Univ., State, Year.
[6] J. O. Williams, “Narrow-band analyser,” Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. Elect. Eng., Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, 1993.
• Websites
Note: Include as much of the key information as you can find for a given website. If a web page has no personal author, you can use a corporate author. Failing that, you can use either Anon. (for anonymous) or it is permissible to use the title of the site.
[Ref number] Author’s initials. Authors Surname. (Year, Month. Day). Title of web page [Online]. Available: URL
[7] BBC News. (2013, Nov. 11). Microwave signals turned into electrical power [Online]. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24897584
[8] M. Holland. (2002). Guide to citing internet sources [Online]. Available: http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/using/guide_to_citing_internet_sourc.html

Considering the ethical duties and responsibilities listed below, the guidelines and policies published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) as open access (such as the "Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" and "COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors") has been prepared.

1. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES

1.1. Ethical Responsibilities of Publisher
Sakarya University Journal of Science Editors act with the awareness of the following ethical responsibilities:
• Editors are responsible for all processes of the studies submitted to Sakarya University Journal of Science. In this context, the decision-makers are the editors, regardless of economic or political gains.
• It undertakes to create an independent editorial decision.
• Sakarya University protects the property and copyright of every article published in the Journal of Science and undertakes the obligation to keep a record of every printed copy.
• It is responsible for taking precautions against all kinds of scientific abuse, citation fraud, and plagiarism regarding the editors.
• Sakarya University Journal of Science keeps its database open to internet access.
• Sakarya University Journal of Science encourages academic honesty. The journal assures the originality of the written works by checking these works before publication through the plagiarism prevention program.

1.2. Duties and Ethical Responsibilities of Editorial Board
• It is the editor's responsibility to decide which of the articles submitted to the journal will be published. The editor will evaluate articles regardless of the authors' race, gender, religious belief, ethnicity, nationality, or political philosophy. The decision will be based on the importance of the article, its originality, its clarity, the validity of the study, and its relevance to the journal’s scope. They should ensure that the study contributes to readers, researchers, and practitioners. Current legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism should also be considered. Editors should not give any privileges to the authors of the articles submitted to the journal and should fulfill their duties in a balanced, objective, and fair manner.
• The editor should not disclose any information about a submitted article to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, and publisher.
• Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript will not be used by the editor or members of the editorial board for their research purposes without the express written consent of the author.
• Editors should strive to improve SAUJS and continuously increase the publication's quality.
• They are responsible for determining and implementing all the journal policies.
• During the evaluation of the studies, they should not bring together people who may have any relationship between them. Editors who make the final decisions on articles are expected to have no personal, professional, or financial ties to the authors of the work.
• Support or sponsored studies should be evaluated similarly to other studies.
• If the study was not prepared in line with the purpose and scope of the journal, they should reject the study directly.
• They should take the necessary measures to prevent possible conflicts of interest and evaluate the existing statement.
• They should apply the necessary sanctions in case of ethical violations related to the work.
• During the evaluation process, they should appoint a reviewer according to the principle of the blind reviewer and respect the principle of confidentiality.
• For the studies to be evaluated impartially, the editors should act by checking the compatibility of the expert area of the referees and the subject of the study, not according to the conflict of interest, while determining the referees.
• Editors should work on continuously updating and expanding the referee pool.
• When publishing issues in the journal, they should include articles in specific fields and articles in a wide range of areas within the journal’s scope.
• They should protect personal data in the evaluated articles; they must protect the individual data of the authors, referees, and readers.
• They should take necessary precautions against people who abuse their power.
• Editors should respond to questions from authors or reviewers about the process as much as possible. They should also be open to negative criticism.
• Editors should check the submission files, ensure that the files other than the article file are complete, and then appoint a referee. It should be checked whether the author has uploaded all the additional statements requested by the journal in a signed manner.
• In all processes of the articles, they should act according to the rules in the journal’s publication process.

1.3. Duties and Ethical Responsibilities of Referees
All research articles submitted to SAUJS are evaluated according to the principle of double-blind peer review. The referees are expected to fill out a referee evaluation form that includes their contribution to the fields under the journal’s scope, their opinions on whether the article is worth publishing, and their justifications for these opinions. In this process, the referees should pay attention to the following ethical responsibilities and make their evaluations accordingly.
• To contribute to the editor's decision-making process by examining the work sent to them for evaluation impartially and objectively (without discrimination of religion, language, race, gender, political views, without considering economic interests) within the time given to them.
• To accept the evaluation of only studies related to expertise.
• To carefully examine the evaluated work and offer constructive and improvement suggestions to increase its quality.
•Due to the principle of double-blind refereeing, it should not be known who the author or the referee who evaluates their work is. For this reason, not to provide comments or any information that may suggest the referee’s name on the referee evaluation form.
• Under the confidentiality principle, they should destroy the work they are evaluating after the evaluation process but only use it if they want to use the work after it is published.
• When the reviewers understand a conflict of interest or a shared interest, they should refuse to evaluate the article and inform the editor. Reviewers should not consider articles containing conflicts of interest arising from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or affiliations with any authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers.
• They should assess a constructive and courteous language. They should not make derogatory personal comments (especially in rejected articles) that are hostile, defamatory, or insulting.
• All articles received for review should be treated as confidential documents. It should not be disclosed or discussed with others unless authorized by the editor.
• Reviewers should identify cases where the relevant published work cited in the article was not mentioned in the reference section. They should indicate whether observations or arguments from other publications accompany the relevant source. Reviewers will notify the editor of significant similarities or overlaps between the reviewed article and other published articles of which they have personal information.

1.4. Duties and Ethical Responsibilities of Authors
• Articles submitted to the journal must be original and scientific work of the author(s). It is essential that the knowledge created in scientific work is new, proposes a new method, or adds a new dimension to existing knowledge. The submitted work should only be a research article or review.
• If authors have used the work and/or statements of others, they should ensure that this is accurately and appropriately cited. The bibliography list should be complete. Plagiarism and fake data should not be included.
• Authors should have a document showing that they have the right to use the data used, the necessary permissions for the research/analysis, or the consent of the experimental subjects.
• The people, institutions, or organizations that support the study and their contributions should be stated in the articles made as a result of research carried out with funding support.
• Situations and relationships that may constitute a conflict of interest in all studies submitted for publication should be disclosed.
• Raw data regarding their articles can be requested from the authors within the framework of the evaluation processes; in such a case, the authors should be ready to present the expected data and information to the editorial board and scientific committee.
• If the authors realize an error or mistake regarding their published, early appearance, or evaluation work, they should cooperate with the editor in informing, correcting, or withdrawing the journal editor or publisher.
• In research on humans and animals, authors must comply with ethical rules and respect patient rights in their publications.
• Authors cannot have their work in the application process of more than one journal simultaneously. Each application can be started following the completion of the previous application.
• All responsibility for the articles belongs to the respective authors. Manuscripts should be prepared under internationally accepted scientific ethical rules. A copy of the Ethics Committee Report should be attached when necessary.
• It is recommended to take into account the YÖK Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive at all stages of the article.

If You Encounter an Unethical Situation
If you encounter any unethical behavior or content in the Sakarya University Journal of Science, other than the above-mentioned ethical responsibilities, please report it to saujs@sakarya.edu.tr via e-mail.

2. PUBLICATION POLICY
Sakarya University Journal of Science (SAUJS) is an open-access journal that aims to increase the public's visibility and impact of scientific studies and is aware of the need for information to be easily accessible to develop science and strengthen the scientific communication network. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0, provided that the source is cited in known standards, all rights of use (online linking, copying, printing, reproduction in any physical medium, distribution, etc.) other than for commercial use and content change (unless otherwise stated in the relevant content). It is made available through its International License (CC BY-NC). Commercial use of the content is prohibited. Articles in the journal can be used as long as the author and original source are cited. No permission is required from the author and publishers.

Six issues are published in SAUJS every year in February, April, June, August, October, and December.

SAUJS does not charge any publication process fee from the author/authors at any stage (submission, evaluation, and publication).

The journal's publisher, Sakarya University Institute of Science and Technology does not charge any publication fee for accessing electronic resources.

2.1. Publication Process of the Journal

• Pre-evaluation process
Articles submitted to SAUJS first fall into the system of the journal secretary. The journal secretary checks whether the files required for the article’s presentation are fully uploaded to the system by the author and whether the file names are appropriate. In addition, it creates the similarity report of the article and uploads it to the system. If there are deficiencies or errors in the files or if the similarity rate of the article is above 30%, the article is sent to the author again to make the necessary updates.

If there is no similarity rate or problems with the files, after this step, the article is sent to the Spelling and Language Editor. The Spelling and Language editor is responsible for checking the compliance of the article with the journal's article writing template and the writing language. After the Spelling and Language Editor has checked, if it has a positive opinion, it sends the article to the Statistics Editor for statistical evaluation of the article. (If there is a problem in the writing style or language of the article, the article is sent back to the author for correction.) After the statistical editor makes the evaluation, the article is directed to the editor related to the field of the article. From here on, the status of the article appears as IN EDITOR. That means the article has been pre-checked.

While in the secretary step, the maximum time given to the secretary for article control is ten days. In this process, the status of the article appears as UNSERVED. When the article is resent to the author, the article’s status will be RE-SEND REQUEST SENT, and the author is given one week to respond to this request. The author who accepts the request has 15 days to resubmit the article. In this process, the article’s status appears as RE-SEND REQUESTED (AT THE AUTHOR). The additional time given to the author(s) who do not return within the specified periods is five days. The maximum time given to the Spelling and Language editor or the Statistics editor is 15 days.

The editor, taking into account the similarity report of the article sent to him, checks whether the article is scientifically sufficient, whether it is a study prepared in line with the purpose and scope of the journal, and its original value. After this check, if it has a positive opinion, the EVALUATION step starts. (If it has a negative opinion, it rejects the article without being included in the referee process.) The editor can also appoint a field editor to do all these checks if necessary.

The maximum time for the editor to take over the article (Check Complete Step) is ten days. The maximum time (Editor Step) for the editor to continue processing the article after taking over is ten days.

• Evaluation process
The editor of the article or the field editor appointed by him, after taking over the article, appoints and invites at least two referees related to the subject of the article to review the article. The reviewer's response time to the invitation to evaluate (accept or reject the evaluation of the article) is seven days. In this process, the status of the article appears as Invitation Sent. The article evaluation form is automatically sent to the referee who accepts the invitation. (In this process, the status of the article appears as Under Evaluation.) The referee's evaluation period for the article is 15 days. Referees who do not return within the specified time are given an additional five days.

In the referee process, the following principles are acted on.

SAUJS operates on the principle of double-blind review. This means that the author(s) of the article will not know the referees’ identities who will evaluate the article, and the referees will not know the identities of the author(s). The aim here is to make an impartial evaluation.

In order to serve this purpose, the author(s) should prepare an article file without revealing their identities. They should remove identifying information, including author names, from filenames. In addition, document properties must be anonymized. For this, all information suggesting the author’s identity in the document should be removed by saying CURRENT PROBLEMS-REVIEW DOCUMENT-DOCUMENT INSPECTOR-AUDITOR from the Microsoft Word FILE menu. To hide the author(s) of the presented work, attention should be paid to the citations made in the article. For example, when the author(s) is citing their work, instead of saying “In our study at [5]…”, “In a study [5] …….” should use the phrase. Author and institution information should not be included in the images in the article. Headers and footers should not contain personal information. When working according to this system, discrimination that may arise from the demographic characteristics or gender of the author is minimized. There is no pressure on the article’s author or the reviewer who examines the article.

The referees who accept the evaluation access the article file via the system (in this process, the referee cannot see the names of the article author(s) on the system). They examine the article within 15 days and upload the completed referee evaluation form to the system.

The number of referee evaluations required for the decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of the article is determined by the editor of the article. The article’s status, which has the desired number of referee evaluation forms, appears as READY FOR DECISION. The time given to take action in this step is seven days. The maximum time allowed for the editor to decide (WAITING FOR DECISION STEP) is seven days.

In this process, the editor has to decide on line with the referee reports. It can also add additional views. The referee notifies the reports and suggestions to the author with a decision letter. With this letter, the article can be accepted or rejected. The editor, if he wishes, may request revisions from the author. The period given to the author to respond to the revision request is seven days. The period given to the author who accepts the revision request is 15 days. (In this process, the article’s status appears as AUTHOR.) After all these steps, accepted articles are transferred to the publication process.

• Publishing process
It is how the accepted articles are prepared for publication in the relevant issue. In this process, the article’s status appears as In Publication Process. In this process, the editor of the publication, the layout writer, and the end reader take part. The layout editor is responsible for making the article ready for publication (such as page layout, placement of tables and images in the article, order of references, page numbers according to the priority of the article acceptance date, placement of the publisher's logo in the article).

The final version of the manuscript, which will be published in the relevant issue, is presented to the users in EARLY VIEW on the journal web page for the author to see. In this process, minor errors that may be present in the article are identified, and there is still time to correct them. If the author detects any errors in this process, he should notify the technical communication officer of the journal by e-mail. The publication editor, who receives information from the technical communication, will make the necessary correction. Articles can wait up to 15 days in EARLY VIEW. It is then published in the relevant issue. After the issue is published, there are ONLY 5 DAYS to correct possible errors. However, the author(s) are expected to submit correction suggestions while the article is in EARLY VIEW.

Article submission/processing is free of charge.