Evaluation Principles

1) Manuscripts that have not been previously published or are not currently under review for publication in another journal and approved by each author are accepted for review.
2) Submitted and pre-checked articles are scanned for plagiarism using Ithenticate software.
3) The Turkish Journal of Social Work conducts a double-blind review process. The editor will first evaluate all manuscripts for suitability for the journal. Eligible manuscripts are sent to at least two independent expert referees to assess the scientific quality of the manuscript.
4) The Editor-in-Chief evaluates manuscripts independently of the ethnicity, gender, nationality, religious beliefs, and political philosophy of the authors. He/she ensures that manuscripts submitted for publication undergo a fair double-blind peer review.
5) The editor-in-chief does not allow conflicts of interest between authors, editors, and reviewers.
6) The editor is responsible for the final decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of manuscripts. The editor's decision is final.
7) Editors are not involved in decisions about manuscripts written by themselves or by family members or colleagues or about products or services in which the editor is interested. Any such submission is subject to all of the journal's usual procedures.
Reviewers should ensure that all information about submitted manuscripts remains confidential until the manuscript is published and should report to the editor if they discover any copyright infringement or plagiarism on the author's part.
If the referee does not feel qualified to review the manuscript or is unlikely to be able to provide timely feedback, he/she should inform the editor and ask him/her not to involve him/her in the review process.
During the review process, the editor should make it clear to reviewers that manuscripts submitted for review are the private property of the authors and that this is a privileged communication. Reviewers and editorial board members may not discuss articles with other individuals. Care should be taken to keep the identity of the reviewers confidential.

Evaluation Process
Refereeing Type: Double Blind
Double Blinding: After the plagiarism check, eligible manuscripts are evaluated by the editor-in-chief for originality, methodology, importance of the topic covered, and compatibility with the journal's scope. The editor ensures that the manuscripts undergo a fair double-blind review, and if the manuscript meets the formal requirements, he/she submits the manuscript to the evaluation of at least two referees from Turkey and/or abroad, and if the referees deem necessary, they approve the manuscript for publication after the authors make the required changes.
Review Time: Pre-Publication
Author-Referee Interactions: Editors mediate all interactions between reviewers and authors.
Time in Review: The time taken until the first decision is approximately 15 days for research articles received in the referee process for review in the Turkish Journal of Social Work.
Plagiarism Check: Yes -Ithenticate scans articles to prevent plagiarism.
Number of Referees Reviewing Each Article: Two to three
Allowable Duration: 20 days. This period can be extended by adding 10 days.
Decision: In order for the article to be accepted for publication by the Editor, at least two referees must make an acceptance decision.
Suspected Ethical Violation: Reviewers should inform the Editor if they suspect misconduct in the research or publication. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for taking the necessary action in accordance with COPE recommendations.

The Editor-in-Chief reviews the research article on the day of submission and, if he/she feels that the article merits further consideration, sends it to the Deputy Editor for further review. The deputy editor usually reads each article from start to finish for research articles. We aim to reach an initial decision for all manuscripts within two or three weeks, but the initial decision is usually made within a few days of submission. If we do not feel that the JTurkish Journal of Social Work is the right journal for the work, we will notify the authors immediately so that they can submit their work elsewhere without delay. The usual reasons for rejection at this stage are insufficient originality and the topic being outside the journal's scope.
The next step for your research paper is our Editorial Board meeting. The members will read your paper and discuss its importance, originality, and scientific quality. We mainly focus on the research question to make editorial decisions for research articles. Even if the article's topic is relevant, topical,l, and important to the journal's scope, we may reject the article if it does not have a research question. Of course, the paper will be rejected if it has serious flaws. Everyone attending the manuscript meeting is asked to declare relevant conflicting interests at the outset, and anyone with a significant conflicting interest either leaves the room or speaks last (depending on the nature and extent of their interest) while the manuscript is being discussed.
If your article suits our journal, the section editor will send it to two external referees. The referees advise the editors, who make the final decision. We ask the referees to confirm their reports and to declare any conflicts of interest in the manuscript we send them. The Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision after external peer review processes.
Some manuscripts may also be reviewed by the ethics editor of the Journal of Islamic Studies and third parties deemed appropriate by the editor in cases of suspected serious research misconduct.
For all manuscripts, we aim to reach a final decision on publication within 4 to 6 weeks of submission. If we propose a publication subject to revision, we usually ask authors to revise and upload their manuscripts within the following month.
The Turkish Journal of Social Work provides open access to articles as part of its commitment to readers and authors. All our articles are freely available online.
If you notice any errors in your published article, please email the editor-in-chief, who will let you know if any corrections are needed.

Refereeing Process Guidelines for the Work of the Editorial Staff
Editorials and analysis articles written by the Turkish Journal of Social Work editors do not undergo external peer review. Original research articles are sent to at least two external referees as blind referees. During this period, the roles of those editors are suspended.

Responsibilities of Authors
The author must comply with research and publication guidelines.
The author should not attempt to publish the same work in multiple journals.
The author should indicate the works used in the article's writing in the bibliography.

Responsibilities of the Editor
The Editor evaluates manuscripts for scientific content without regard to the ethnicity, gender, citizenship, religious beliefs, or political opinions of the authors.
The editor conducts a fair double-blind peer review of manuscripts submitted for publication and ensures that all information about submitted manuscripts is kept confidential before publication.
The editor informs the reviewers that the manuscripts are confidential and that this is a privileged interaction. Reviewers and the editorial board cannot discuss manuscripts with other people. The anonymity of reviewers must be ensured. In certain cases, the editor may share a reviewer's review with other reviewers to clarify a particular point.
The editor is responsible for the content and overall quality of the publication. It is also his/her responsibility to issue a correction note or retraction when necessary.
The editor does not allow any conflict of interest between authors, editors, and reviewers. He/she has full authority only to appoint referees, and the Editorial Board is responsible for the final decision to publish the manuscript in the journal.

Responsibilities of Reviewers
Reviewers should not have any conflicts of interest related to the research, the authors, and/or the research funders.
The reviewers' evaluations should be objective.
The language and style used by the referees should not offend the author.
Reviewers should ensure that all information regarding submitted manuscripts remains confidential until the manuscript is published.
Reviewers should notify the editor if they notice copyright infringement or plagiarism in the work they review.
A reviewer who feels inadequate to review a manuscript or who feels that he/she cannot complete the review in the allotted time should withdraw from the review process.
During the review process, reviewers are expected to consider the following points: Does the article contain new and important information / Does the abstract clearly and properly describe the content of the article / Is the methodology described in a coherent and comprehensible manner / Are the interpretations and conclusions substantiated by the findings / Are there sufficient references to other studies in the field / Is the language quality adequate?

Preliminary Review and Plagiarism Scanning
The manuscript is reviewed by the editor for compliance with the journal's publication principles, academic writing rules, and the APA Citation System. It is scanned for plagiarism using the iThenticate program. The preliminary review is completed within a maximum of 15 days. The plagiarism similarity rate must be less than 20%. If the similarity rate appears to be 1%, but the citation and quotation are not done properly, there may still be plagiarism. In this respect, citation and quotation rules must be known and carefully applied by the author:

Citation/Indirect Citation: If a citation is made to an opinion, discussion, or determination in a source and the cited opinion is put on the line in the words of the researcher, a footnote sign (1) should be placed at the end of the sentence. The page number should be given if the citation is to a specific page or page range of the work. If there is a reference to the entire work, that is, if the reference is made to a degree that requires the reader to examine the entire work, the source should be indicated in the footnote after the phrase "bk. on this subject", "bk. about this opinion", "bk. about this discussion" or just "bk.".

Quotation/Iquotation: If the relevant part of the source is quoted verbatim, without touching the point and comma, the quoted part is "enclosed in double quotation marks," and the source is indicated by giving the footnote number at the end. Quotations that exist in the directly quoted text are written using 'single quotation marks.' If the directly quoted part is longer than three lines (more than forty words), it is shown in a separate paragraph. In order to distinguish long quotations from the main text, it should be preferred to write in a font size one smaller than the normal text size and to indent the entire paragraph from the left at the beginning of the line. Some words, sentences, and paragraphs may be omitted in direct quotations, provided they do not change the meaning. Ellipses (...) are placed in place of the omitted parts. It is incorrect to write the part quoted verbatim from a source without enclosing it in "double quotation marks" and to be contented with just writing the source at the end. If these rules are not followed, the author may be accused of violating publication ethics (Plagiarism).

Field Editor Review
The relevant field editor reviewed the manuscript that passed the Preliminary Review and Plagiarism Scanning stage regarding problematic and academic language and style. This review is completed within a maximum of 15 days.

Referee Process (Academic Evaluation)
After being reviewed by the field editor, the manuscript is submitted to at least two external referees with a PhD thesis, book, or article on the subject. The referee process is confidential within the framework of double-blind refereeing. The referee is requested to either state his/her opinion on the manuscript or justify it with an explanation of at least 150 words on the online referee form. The author is given the right to object and defend his/her views if he/she disagrees with the referee's opinions. The field editor ensures mutual communication between the author and the referee while maintaining confidentiality. If both referee reports are positive, the manuscript is submitted to the Editorial Board with a proposal for publication. If one of the two referees has a negative opinion, the manuscript is sent to a third referee. Studies can be published with the positive decision of at least two referees. The publication of book and symposium reviews and doctoral thesis abstracts is decided upon the evaluation of at least two internal referees (the relevant field editors and/or editorial board members).

Proofreading Phase
If the referees request corrections to be made in the text they have reviewed, the relevant reports are sent to the author, and he/she is asked to correct his/her work. The author makes the corrections in the Word program with the "Track Changes" feature turned on or indicates the changes in the text in red. Submit the corrected text to the field editor.

Field Editor Control
The field editor checks whether the author has made the requested corrections to the text.

Referee Check
The reviewer checks whether the author has made the requested corrections to the text.

Turkish Language Check
The Turkish Language Editor and the Editor-in-Chief review the manuscripts that pass through the referee process. If necessary, the author is asked to proofread the manuscript. The review process is completed within a maximum of 15 days.

Foreign Language Control
The English and Arabic Language Editors review the manuscripts that pass the Turkish language check, and if necessary, the author is asked to make corrections. The English language editor's check process is completed within a maximum of 15 days.

Final Reader
After this process, the final reader checks the article for compliance with the APA Citation System.

Editorial Board Review
The Editorial Board examines articles that pass technical, academic, and linguistic reviews, and it is decided whether they will be published or not and, if so. They will be included in this issue. The Board decides by majority vote. In the case of equality, the final decision is made in favor of the editor's decision.

Typesetting and Layout Phase
The manuscripts that are decided to be published by the Editorial Board are typeset and edited, made ready for publication, and sent to the author for review. This stage takes a maximum of 15 days.

Data Submission to National and International Indexes
The published issue data is sent to the relevant indexes within 15 days.