The publication policy of the Sakarya University Graduate School of Business Journal (SAUGSB-J) is based on the improvement and dissemination of information impartially and respectfully. The processes in line with this policy directly affect the quality of the studies submitted by authors and affiliated institutions. Peer-reviewed studies support and materialize the scientific method. Therefore, all the parties taking part in the process (authors, readers, researchers, publishers, reviewers, editors) should comply with the ethical principles.

SAUGSB-J, adheres to national and international standards in research and publication ethics. It complies with the Press Law, the Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works, and the Higher Education Institutions Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive. SAUGSB-J has adopted the International Ethical Publishing Principles published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

Sakarya University Graduate School of Business Journal, expects all its parties to take on the following ethical responsibilities as part of the publication ethics.

The ethical duties and responsibilities listed down below are based on the guidelines and policies published as open access by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Publishing an article in a peer-reviewed journal is essential for developing a coherent and respected knowledge network. Peer-reviewed articles support and develop scientific methods. Therefore, it is important for all relevant parties involved in the publishing process, including authors, journal editors, reviewers, and publishing agencies, to agree on the expected ethical behaviours and standards.

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Authors: All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Reviewers: Referees should inform the journal editor about the evaluation process if they suspect any conflict of interest in the article they are evaluating, and refuse article evaluation if necessary. In order to prevent conflict of interest, people in the institutions where the article authors are working cannot referee the article.

Authors are asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data, if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

Fabrication and/or falsified experimental results, including the manipulation of images.

Sakarya University Graduate School of Business Journal (SAUGSB-J) strongly recommend author(s) submit supplementary material and data sets that illustrate the results shown in their papers. If any restrictions exist on the side of the author(s), these concerns should be shared with the editorial teams during the submission of scientific papers.

SAUGSB-J encourages author(s) to share data and make them publicly available if they do not violate human rights or other privacy issues. Authors are recommended to cite any data referenced in their studies. Cited data sets, apart from whether they are creatred by the author(s) or not, should be written in the reference lists of papers. Authors are also recommended to include a data availability statement.

Sakarya University Graduate School of Business Journal encourages all authors to make their data available to share publicly.

Manuscripts that are either found to have been submitted elsewhere or published elsewhere. If authors have used their own work, either previously submitted or published, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they are required to cite the previous work. They also need to indicate how novel contributions are offered in their submitted manuscript, over and above those of the previous work.

• Authors certify that their submitted manuscript (and any supporting items) are their own intellectual property and the copyright has not been transferred to others.

• Authors certify that the manuscript contains no plagiarism, no fabrication, no falsification, no manipulated citations and that the manuscript conforms to JSS authorship policies.

• All manuscripts, revisions, drafts, and galleys remain the intellectual property of the author(s). Except as stated in the agreed license, the author(s) retain the copyright to their work.

• All review comments and reports remain the intellectual property of the reviewer or editor. Except as stated in the agreed license, the author(s) retain the copyright to their work.

• Authors, reviewers, and editors agree to keep all communications, comments, or reports from reviewers or editors confidential.

• Reviewers and editors agree to keep all manuscripts, revisions, and drafts confidential, with the exception of the final published galley(s).

• Editors may make corrections if they detect minor errors in the published article that do not affect the findings, interpretations, or results.

• Editors may retract the article in case of major errors/violations that invalidate the findings and results.

• Editors may issue a statement of concern if there is a possibility of abusive research or publication by the authors, if there is evidence that the findings are unreliable and the authors' institutions have not investigated the incident, or if the potential investigation seems unfair or inconclusive. COPE and ICJME guidelines are taken into account with regard to the correction, retraction, and expression of concern.

Aiming to establish ethical assurance in scientific periodicals, Sakarya University Graduate School of Business Journal adopts the principles of the "Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" and the "Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers" published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In this scope, the following aspects should be adhered in the studies submitted to the journal:

• In studies that require ethics committee approval, information about the approval (committee name, date and issue number) has to be included in the method section of the study. In addition, the relevant Ethics Committee Permission should be included in at the end of the article, in case presentations in the article information form, information that the informed consent form has been signed should be included in the article.

• All kinds of research conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that require data collection from participants through surveys, interviews, focus group works, observations, experiments and other interview techniques.

• Use of humans and animals (including material/data) for experimental or other scientific purposes,

• Clinical studies conducted on humans,

• Studies conducted on animals,

• Retrospective studies in accordance with the law on the protection of personal data,

Also;

• A statement confirming that an "informed consent form" has been received in case reports,

• Obtaining permission from the owners for the use of scales, surveys or photographs belonging to others,

• A statement confirming that copyright regulations are met for the intellectual and artistic works used.

A special issue can be published in our journal once a year upon the request of the Editorial Board. The publication processes of the articles sent to be included in the special issue are the same as the standard processes.

1. Additional or Special issue: An issue published in addition to the regular issues of a periodically published journal. It may consist of conference papers or a series of articles focusing on a specific topic.

2. Page numbering in the additional or special issue is different from the regular issues.

3. The print run of the additional or special issue cannot be more than one third of the regular issue. The special issues containing conference paper abstracts are not included in this scope.

4. Ratios of case reports, compilations and research articles (excluding conference paper abstracts) published in the additional or special issue will be included in the ratios of articles published in other issues.

5. The issues published as a tribute are not accepted as an additional or special issue. Their page numbering and organization are the same as the regular issues.

(Turkish Council of Higher Education [YÖK] Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive, Article 4)

Plagiarism: Showing others' original ideas, methods, data or works as their own work, partially or completely, without reference to scientific rules,

a) Not specifying the supporting individuals, institutions or organizations and their contributions in the publications made as a result of research conducted with support.

f) Misusing resources, spaces, facilities and equipment provided or allocated for scientific research,

• Studies must be original and based on research.

• It must be ensured that all the persons mentioned as authors/co-authors have contributed to the article. It is against scientific ethics to show persons who have not made any academic contribution as additional authors or to rank the authors by non-scientific criteria such as title, age and gender, regardless of the order of contribution.

• In the articles with multiple authors, it should be clearly stated to what extent the authors have contributed to which stage of the article.

• The article should not be sent to different journals at the same time and should not have been sent to another journal before. If it is found to have been sent to another journal, the publication process will be cancelled.

• It is assumed that the authors who submit articles to the journal have read and accepted the publication and writing principles of the journal, and the authors are deemed to have committed to these principles.

• The citations and bibliography should be complete.

• Plagiarism and fake data should be avoided.

• The similarity rate obtained as a result of the similarity checks should not exceed 20% in order to initiate the peer review process.

• An article may be included in a maximum of 2 PRE-REVIEW processes. The article will be rejected if the feedback conveyed to the author is not revised.

• The corresponding author must inform the journal editor in case of any conflict of interest.

In this scope, WAME can be referred.

• Authors should not resubmit the same studies previously rejected in our journal. In such a case, the studies will be rejected.

• Peer reviewers should be aware that they play a critical role in the academic quality of the article to be published in the journal, and they should engage in the peer review process with the responsibility of improving academic quality.

• Peer reviewers should only accept to review articles for which they have the expertise to make an appropriate assessment. They should also respect the confidentiality of the blind peer review process and keep the details of the article confidential at all costs.

• After the review process, any information about the reviewed article should not be shared with others under any circumstances.

• Peer reviewers should only evaluate the accuracy of the content of the articles and their compliance with academic criteria. Any difference of opinions between the article's argument and the peer reviewer should not affect the review process.

• Peer review reports should be objective and measurable. Libelous, derogatory or accusatory expressions should definitely be avoided.

• Peer reviewers should avoid superficial or inaccurate statements in their peer review reports. In reviews with negative results, a complete justification should be presented on the aspects that led to the negative result.

• Peer reviewers should review the articles within the time period allotted to them. If they are not going to review the article, they should notify the journal within a reasonable time.

Sakarya University Graduate School of Business Journal (SAUGSB-J), its editors, adhere to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). It maintains its publication policy based on the principles of COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and Publication Ethics Flowcharts developed by COPE.

• Editors should accept articles that will contribute to the relevant areas specified in the journal policy.

• Editors should not have any conflict of interest with accepted or rejected articles.

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

• It is editors' responsibility to keep the names of peer reviewers and authors mutually confidential.

• Only the articles that will contribute to the relevant field should be accepted.

• If an error is detected, editors should support the correction or retraction of the error.

• It is the duty of editors to complete the pre-review, peer review, editing and publishing processes of the articles submitted to the journal in a timely and appropriate manner.

• Editors should not assign people who do not contribute to the journal as editorial board members or associate editors.

Any manuscript that is considered to be published in SAUGSB-J must meet the following criterias:

• Originality

• Not containing ethical violations

• Having clear messages for the scientific community

• Expressing the extent of the article's contributions to researchers in the field and its relevance to social sciences

• Current fields and topics drawing the interest of researchers in the field of social sciences

• Having structural and logical integrity

• Research results that are based on scientific evidence

• Coherence of the scientific method

Articles can be submitted to the SAUGSB-J by registering in the "Article Management System" on https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/sauied . Articles sent by e-mail will not be taken into consideration.

The journal's compliance with the writing rules is examined and a similarity check is made to prevent plagiarism. iThenticate program as a similarity software is used in the checking process. The overall similarity rate should be less than 20% and the similarity rate from a single source should be maximum 3%. If the similarity rate is more than 20%, the study is either rejected or sent back to the author to reduce the similarity rate. The pre-review is completed within a maximum of 30 days.

After the study passes the stages of pre-review and similarity checking, it is reviewed by the relevant editor/field editor in terms of subject, scope, language use and academic competence. This review is completed within a maximum of 30 days.

Studies that pass the pre-review and editorial review undergo a confidential double-blind peer review process. Within the double-blind strategy, the identity of the peer reviewer is concealed from the author submitting publications to the journal. Similarly, the peer reviewers do not know who wrote the article they are reviewing. In other words, the peer review process is conducted by keeping both authors and peer reviewers anonymous to each other. The reports are also stored in the Article Management System.

Authors take into account the feedback, criticisms and recommendations of the reviewer and the Editorial Board. In case of any disagreement, they have the right to appeal with their justifications. Authors edit the article as per the reports and upload the final version of the article to the system.

Studies that pass the peer-review process are examined by the Turkish Language Editor and if necessary, corrections are requested from the author. The checking process is completed within a maximum of 15 days.

Studies that pass the Turkish language control are reviewed by the English Language Editor and if necessary, corrections are requested from the author. The checking process is completed within a maximum of 15 days.

The articles that pass technical, academic and linguistic reviews are examined by the Editorial Board and the final publication status is determined. In case of any objection from the members, the Board decides by majority of votes.

The journal undertakes the typesetting and layout processes of the studies decided to be published by the Editorial Board.

SAUGSB-J publishes articles written in Turkish and English. Turkish language articles should also include English abstracts. If the article is written in a language other than English, an extended English summary should be added after the bibliography. The extended summary should be in line with the rules of writing applied in the article and should not be less than 750 words.

SAUGSB-J accepts article authors according to the statement on the Title Page of the article. Therefore, it is the responsibility of authors to submit the final version of the full author list. Requests for any change of authorship after the submission of the article (e.g removal/addition of authors, change of order, etc.) are subject to editorial approval. The Editorial Board will investigate such cases and act according to the COPE flowcharts.

Requests for a change of authorship should be conveyed to the Editor with an official letter stating the reasons for the change. The letter should be signed by all the authors and include their confirmation of the change of authorship. If the request is approved by the Editorial Board, the authors are required to submit a new Copyright Agreement Form according to the final author list.

The opinions expressed in the articles published in the journal are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the SAUGSB-J and its Editor-In-Chief, Editors, Editorial Board, Publisher or Secretariat. The Editor-in-Chief, Editors, Editorial Board, Publisher and Secretariat assume no responsibility or liability for such cases. The sole responsibility for the published content lies with the authors.

Sakarya University Graduate School of Business Journal (SAUGSB-J) handles complaints and appeals by following the below procedure. Complaints including but not limited to the long delays in handling studies and publication ethics initially be handled by the Editor-in-Chief of SAUGSB-J. The Editor-in-Chief examines complaints and appeals together with the Editorial Board if applicable. If anything occurs about complaints and appeals please contact ied@sakarya.edu.tr.

The Editor-in-Chief examines the complaints of the author(s), and the reports of the reviewers and make a decision:

• The confirmation of the rejection of the paper,

• The appeal of the author should be considered,

• A fresh opinion form an independent reviewer is needed.

The final decision of the Editor-in-Chief is notified to the author(s). The explanations of the consequences of the appeal is shared with the author(s) if necessary. This is the final decision of SAUGSB-J.

The complaints about the process are handled by the Editor-in-Chief. Long delays in handling studies are examined by editors of SAUGSB-J and any necessary issues are shared with the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief considers are complaints and ensures that Assistant Editors share the necessary feedback with the author(s).

The Editor-in-Chief considers complaints about publication ethics of the author's or reviewer's conduct. The Editor-in-Chief follow the publication ethics which are published on the Sakarya University Graduate School of Business (SAUGSB-J) website. The editorial board of SAUGSB-J examines the concern of complaints or reviewers. The details amd progress of the examination are shared with the complainant(s) clearly. The Editor-in-Chief or Assistant Editors provide feedback to the complaintant(s) on the manner of action and the final decision.

The average time during which the preliminary assessment of manuscripts is conducted: 3 days

The average time during which the reviews of manuscripts are conducted: 60 days

The average time in which the article is published: 90 days

Date of update: August 23rd, 2023.