SMAR’s practices concerning open access, copyright, licensing, self-archiving, and digital preservation are intended to regulate, in a clear and transparent manner, the accessibility and conditions of use of published scholarly content, the scope of authors’ and the publisher’s rights, and the long-term preservation of such content. This section sets out the journal’s open access model, the principles governing copyright transfer, the applicable Creative Commons licence, authors’ self-archiving rights, and the policies and practices relating to the digital preservation of published content.

1. Open Access Policy

SMAR provides immediate and free open access to all scholarly content it publishes. The full texts of published articles are accessible without any subscription, registration, or access fee.

Scholarly content is made openly accessible immediately upon publication. Readers are not required to hold an institutional or individual subscription in order to access published articles, and no embargo period is applied to published content.

SMAR adopts the principle that openly accessible scholarly knowledge enhances the visibility, usability, and scholarly dissemination of research findings. The journal’s open access practice supports the dissemination of published scholarly studies to a broader academic and societal audience.

2. Copyright Transfer and Licensing

For studies accepted for publication in SMAR, authors transfer the transferable economic rights in the work to the publisher of SMAR within the scope of the Copyright Transfer and Compliance with Scientific Ethics Form.

Authorship status, the right to be identified as the author of the work, and authors’ non-transferable moral rights remain with the authors. The copyright transfer covers only the transferable economic rights expressly specified in the relevant form and the scope of their permitted use.

The transferred economic rights are exercised for the purposes of publishing, reproducing, distributing, making the study available to the public in electronic form, archiving it, and making it available for use in accordance with the journal’s open access and licensing policy.

The transfer of copyright takes effect only if the study is accepted for publication. No permanent transfer of economic rights in favour of the publisher arises in relation to studies that are not accepted for publication.

Articles published in SMAR are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence.

The CC BY-NC 4.0 licence permits the sharing, reproduction, and adaptation of the work for non-commercial purposes, provided that appropriate attribution is given, a link to the licence is provided, and any modifications are clearly indicated.

SMAR does not impose additional restrictions that would limit the rights of use granted under the CC BY-NC 4.0 licence. Where an article contains third-party material that is not covered by the article’s general Creative Commons licence, this must be indicated separately.

Information concerning copyright ownership and the applicable Creative Commons licence is clearly displayed in the full texts of published articles.

3. Self-Archiving Policy

SMAR supports the accessibility and scholarly dissemination of published research. All articles published in the journal are made openly accessible immediately upon publication without any subscription, registration, fee, or embargo.

As SMAR is a fully open access journal, authors and readers may freely access the published final version (Version of Record) of an article from the moment of publication, after peer review, editorial checks, and all required revisions have been completed, and after the article’s final bibliographic information has been established and a DOI has been assigned.

For the purposes of preserving the integrity of the scholarly record, preventing errors, omissions, or differences in versions prepared before completion of the peer-review and editorial processes from being confused with the published final version, and ensuring that citations refer to a reliable and bibliographically established version, SMAR’s self-archiving policy is based on the published final version (Version of Record).

Authors may self-archive the published final version (Version of Record) of their studies published in SMAR on their personal academic webpages, in institutional repositories, or in subject-based scholarly repositories without any embargo period.

Where the published final version is self-archived, a bibliographic citation to the original article published in SMAR must be provided, together with the article’s DOI link. The use and reuse of the self-archived published final version are subject to the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 licence.

The author-submitted version (Submitted Version) and the author-accepted manuscript prior to publication (Author Accepted Manuscript) are not eligible for self-archiving under SMAR’s self-archiving policy.

This restriction does not constitute an embargo or other barrier to access to published scholarly content. The published final version (Version of Record) issued by SMAR is made openly accessible immediately upon publication and may be self-archived by authors without any waiting period.

For the purposes of this policy, self-archiving refers to the deposit of the published final version (Version of Record) issued by SMAR. Other rights of reuse arising from the CC BY-NC 4.0 licence are governed by the terms of that licence.

4. Digital Archiving and Long-Term Preservation

Articles and issues published in SMAR are electronically preserved through the DergiPark infrastructure. The journal supports the long-term preservation, continued integrity, and ongoing accessibility of its published scholarly content.

SMAR is digitally archived through the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system provided via DergiPark. The LOCKSS system supports the long-term preservation of published open access scholarly content through a distributed digital preservation infrastructure.

Through SMAR’s LOCKSS manifest on DergiPark, the LOCKSS system is authorised to collect, preserve, and provide access to the journal’s open access archival units.

SMAR LOCKSS Manifest: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/smar/lockss-manifest

The assignment of DOIs to published articles supports their persistent identification, discoverability, and linking across different scholarly information systems.