Publication processes applied in Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences contribute to the development and distribution of information impartially and respectably. The processes applied in this direction are directly reflected in the quality of the work of authors and the institutions that support them. Peer-reviewed studies are studies that embody and support the scientific method. At this point, all stakeholders of the process (authors, readers, and researchers, publisher, referees, and editors) must comply with the standards for ethical principles.
Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences expects to assume the following ethical responsibilities from all stakeholders.
Ethical duties and responsibilities listed below have been prepared by considering the guidelines and policies published as open access by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (See COPE Directive in Turkish). Publishing an article in a peer-reviewed journal is necessary for the development of a compatible and respected information network. This process reflects the quality of work of the authors and their supporting institutions. Peer-reviewed articles support and shape scientific methods. Therefore, all parties involved in publishing, authors, journal editors, referees, and publishing organizations need to agree on the standards of expected ethical behavior.

Open Access Policy

Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences, follows an Open Access Policy relevant to the declaration of Budapest Open Access Initiative on February 14th, 2002 in Budapest, Hungary. In the declaration, open access was described as:

"By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself."

In the frame of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences, agrees that the only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

For the fulltext of the Budapest Open Access Initiative please click https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read


Copyright Policy

Authors who publish their works in the Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences have accepted the following conditions:
- All rights of the article belong to the author.
- The author obeyed the academic and ethical rules during the preparation of the article.
- No copyright of a third party is violated in the article submitted.
- In this frame, the author reserves the copyright of the work and leaves the first publication rights of the article to Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences .
- The work is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0, which allows to be shared by others provided its author to be specified and its first publication is published in this journal.
- The author may make separate contract arrangements for the distribution of the published version of the work without authorization (for example, to be sent to a corporate database or to be published in a book).
- Authors are encouraged to share their works on the internet (for example, in the corporate database or on their own websites) before submitting them to the journal or while the submission process is in progress; this can lead to both efficient exchange of ideas and earlier and greater citation of the work (see the Impact of Open Access).
- In case of legal prosecution are initiated due to the information in the article, the responsibility belongs to the author of the article, not the journal staff. In this case, the financial loss, litigation and defense costs are the responsibility of the authors.


Privacy Declaration

Names and e-mail addresses in the website of this journal will be only used for the before determined purposed of the journal and will not be used for another purpose or shared with third parties.

Evaluation Criteria

Preliminary Evaluation

Research articles, translations and book reviews can be sent to the Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences.

All the articles sent to the journal are subject to preliminary evaluation by the editors. Manuscripts that are not scope of the journal, do not comply with the academic writing format in terms of content and formal conditions are rejected before the refereeing process is started or some changes may be requested. The result of the editorial review is reported to the author. No article can be accepted for publication by editors without a positive referee report.

If the translations of articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals in different languages are considered to be within the scope of the journal, they are checked by the language editors of the journal and published if the translation is found appropriate.


Plagiarism Screening

Plagiarism is a publication ethics violation that has been encountered quite frequently in academic circles. All articles, book reviews and translations sent to Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences are subject to plagiarism screening through plagiarism detection software in order to combat plagiarism and act in accordance with publication ethics. The software used for this purpose is iThenticate Plagiarism Detection Software. In the screening to be made with the program, if the similarity ratio of the scanned article is over 15%, the article is rejected by the Editorial Board without being put into the referee process. The plagiarism report of the rejected article is also shared with the author. The rejected article is not re-evaluated in any way. Research articles from the articles that are clean as a result of plagiarism screening are accepted to the referee process; translations and book reviews are examined by the editorial board.


Review Policy (Double Blind Peer Review System)

Every article sent to Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences and passed the preliminary evaluation and plagiarism screening goes through the review process mentioned below.

The double blind peer review system is applied in every stage of the process, in which the names of the referees and authors are kept secret.

The articles that pass the preliminary evaluation stage are sent to the two referees determined by the Editor and / or Editorial Board from different institutions. Considering their areas of expertise, both the members of the journal's editorial and advisory boards and external academics can be designated as referees.

Referees evaluate the texts sent to them in terms of originality, methodology, contribution to the literature, presentation of the findings and supporting the results and benefiting from previous studies.

Referees can accept, reject the article, or ask the authors to make corrections to the format and / or content. In order for an article to be accepted for publication, at least two referees must provide a positive opinion. If one of the referee reports is positive and the other is negative, the article is sent to a third referee.

In case the referee or referees request correction, the author submits the requested corrections within 15 days at the latest considering the criticism and suggestions made by the referees. Referees may request corrections more than once for the same article.

The article, which is not approved for publication by two referees, is not accepted for publication and the articles that are not accepted for publication are returned to their authors.

Referee reports are kept for 5 years by the journal editor.

The authors may object to the negative opinions of the referees, provided that they show evidence against any changes and corrections they wish. This objection is examined by the Editorial Board and, if deemed necessary, a different referee opinion is sought.

In order for their work to be published, the authors must take into consideration the opinions and suggestions of the referees and Editorial Board.

The final evaluation is made by the Editorial Board for all articles that come to the stage of publication by giving a positive opinion by the referees. Articles that are decided to be “published” by the Editorial Board are placed in the publication order and will be published in the next issue.

The authors who submit articles to Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences, are deemed to have accepted the review conditions and process in question.

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011) Sinop University Journal of Social Sciences, defines the responsibilities of editors, reviewers and authors as below:

Authorship
· The bibliography list should be complete.
· Plagiarism and fake data should not be included.
· No attempt should be made to publish the same research in more than one journal, and it should comply with scientific research and publication ethics.

Actions against science research and publication ethics are as follows:

a) Plagiarism: The practice of taking someone else's ideas, methods, data, practices, writings, figures, or works and passing them off as one's own and in whole or in part, without reference to scientific rules.
b) Fraud: To produce data that is not based on research; editing or changing the submitted or published work based on unfounded data and reporting or publishing them and presenting research that has not been done as it has been done.
c) Distortion: To falsify research records and obtained data, presenting methods, devices, and materials not used in the research as they were used, not to evaluate the data that does not comply with the research hypothesis, manipulate data and/or results to fit relevant theory or assumptions, to falsify or shape the research results in line with the interests of the people and organizations supported.
d) Republishing: To present more than one work containing the same results of research as separate work in associate professor examination evaluations and academic promotions.
e) Slicing: Presenting the results of research as separate works in the evaluations of associate professorship exams and academic promotions by dividing the results of that research in a way that violates the integrity of that research, by dividing it into parts inappropriately, and by making multiple publications without reference to each other.
f) Unfair authorship: To include people who do not have an active contribution among the authors, not to include the person who active contributions among the authors, changing the order of authors unjustifiably and inappropriately, removing the names of those who contributed actively at the time of publication or in subsequent editions, to include his name among the authors by using his influence, although he did not have an active contribution.
g) The other types of ethical violations: Not clearly stating the supporting persons, institutions, or organizations and their contributions to the research in the publications of supported research; failure to comply with ethical rules in research on humans and animals; not respecting patient rights in their publications; the referee's sharing the information contained in the work he has examined with others before the work is published; to misuse the resources, places, facilities and devices provided or allocated for scientific research; to allege unfounded and deliberate ethical violations (YÖK Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive, Article 8).


Author Responsibilities
• All authors must contribute significantly to the research.
• All data in the article must be declared as true and original.
• All authors have the right to withdraw their articles.
• All authors are responsible for correcting article errors.

Referee Responsibilities
• Evaluations should be impartial.
• Reviewers should not have a conflict of interest with the research, authors, and/or research funders.
• Checked articles should be kept confidential.

Editorial Responsibilities
• Editors have full responsibility and authority to accept or reject an article.
• Editors should not have a conflict of interest regarding the accepted or rejected articles.
• Only articles that will contribute to the field should be accepted.
• Support the correction or withdrawal of work when errors are found.
• Editors should keep the name of the Referees confidential and prevent plagiarism/fake data.

Ethics Committee Approval
1. Including the social sciences, ethics committee approval must be obtained for studies conducted in all branches of science and for clinical and experimental studies on humans and animals that require an ethics committee decision. This approval should be specified and documented in the article.
2. Information on ethical rules should be given under separate headings for the referee, author, and editor.
3. Articles should include a statement that the Research and Publication Ethics are complied with.
4. Ethical principles should be stated under a separate heading in the journal and, /or website by citing according to national and international standards. For example, in scientific articles sent to journals, the recommendations of the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) and the International Standards for Editors and Authors of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) should be considered.
5. In studies requiring ethics committee permission, information about the permission (name of the committee, date, and number) should be included in the method section and on the first/last page of the article. In case reports, information about signing the informed consent form should be included in the article.
6. It is necessary to comply with the copyright regulations for the intellectual and artistic works used.

QUESTION: Is ethics committee approval required for all articles?

No. In the criteria, it is stated as “articles that require the permission of the Ethics Committee”.
Studies that require the approval of the Ethics Committee are as follows.
• All kinds of research conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that require data collection from the participants by using survey, interview, focus group work, observation, experiment, interview techniques.
• The use of humans and animals (including material/data) for experimental or other scientific purposes,
• Clinical studies on humans,
• Research on animals,
• Retrospective studies by the law on the protection of personal data,
Also;
• Indicating that an “informed consent form” was received in case reports,
• Obtaining and specifying permission from the owners for the use of scales, questionnaires, photographs belonging to others,
• Indication of compliance with copyright regulations for the intellectual and artistic works used.

QUESTION: Should a retrospective Ethics Committee Permission be obtained for publications produced from studies and thesis completed in previous years?
Retrospective ethics committee approval is not required for articles that were published before 2020, produced from master's/doctoral studies (must be specified in the article), applied for publication to the journal in the previous year, and accepted but not yet published.

QUESTION: Are there any restrictions on publications made outside universities with these rules of the TR Index?
No. Non-university researchers can also apply to the Ethics Committees in their regions.