PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT
Turkish Journal of Earthquake Research (TDAD) commits to adhere publication ethics, academic principles and ethical values in its publication policy. Publication malpractice is strictly prohibited by all possible measures in TDAD. The important issues to be emphasized in this section constitute under several captions. These are outlined as; Academic Principles and Ethical Values, Peer-Review Process, Publishing Schedule, Publication Ethics, Ethical Oversights and Behaviors, Access, Author Fees, Revenue Sources, Advertising, Direct Marketing, and Process for Plagiarism, Allegations and Research Misconduct. Elaborations about above titles are given in the following text in detail:
ACADEMIC PRINCIPLES AND ETHICAL VALUES
TDAD is a double blind peer review international academic journal and accepts all ethical principles published by:
* Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
* Creative Commons (CC) Attribution 4.0 International Non-Commercial Licence (CC-BY-NC 4.0)
* Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI)
* Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
* Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Regulation (YÖK)
* Journal Evaluation Criteria (TR Dizin)
PEER-REVIEW PROCESS
With peer-review process, TDAD aims an objective publication policy and originality of scientific works. Details are emphasized below:
The Policy of Peer Review: The TDAD uses the double-blinded reviewing, in which the names of referees and authors are kept at every stage of the process. It means that the reviewers are not apprised of the authors’ names or institutions in the submitted manuscript, and authors are not identified to reviewers.
Initial Manuscript Evaluation: All articles submitted to TDAD are first evaluated by the Secretariat technically. Articles that are not enough for journal’s requirements can be rejected or requested revisions at this stage. If they are in line, then it is sent to the Editor. The Editor can assign editorial board or reviewers.
Reviewer Evaluation: Manuscripts are evaluated by two reviewers who can be determined by the Editor or Editorial Board. If necessary, the number of reviewers can be increased but a reviewer can only serve once in an issue. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript’s originality, methodology, contribution to the literature, presentation of results and support for the conclusions, and appropriate referencing of previous relevant studies. Acceptation, rejection or revision decision on the manuscript are given by reviewers. For the publication of papers, two positive decisions are required. In case one decision is negative, the study is forwarded to a third reviewer to have final decision. A manuscript that has been rejected can not be resubmitted to the same issue. It can be sent to next issue at the earliest. A person can not be a corresponding author (or one of the authors) and a Reviewer (or issue Editor) at the same time for an issue of the journal. When revision, criticism and suggestion are required by reviewer(s), requests are sent back to the corresponding author. If the revised manuscript is not sent, the manuscript is removed from the peer-review process.
PUBLISHING SCHEDULE
Time of peer-review process ends in 8-10 weeks after submission (1 week for initial check, 6-8 weeks for peer-review process, 1 week for final decision). Author(s) should complete revision requests 4 weeks before 30 April, 30 August and 30 December of every year (journal publication days). Publication period of TDAD is three times a year (triannual).
PROCESS FOR PLAGIARISM, ALLEGATIONS AND RESEARCH MISCONDUCT
TDAD is strictly against any unethical act of copying, publication of papers where research misconduct, in any form, has occurred including citation manipulation, data falsification or fabrication, among others. In order to avoid plagiarism, all manuscripts need to be checked using similarity programs and remained a maximum of 20% before submitting to TDAD. In case of a study that is found to be plagiarized after publication, the Editor will conduct preliminary investigation, possibly with the help of a suitable committee constituted for the purpose. If the manuscript is found to be plagiarized beyond the acceptable limits, the journal will contact the author’s institution. Another communication procedure will also start with the corresponding author, if any, of original paper that was published before. The paper containing the plagiarism will also be marked on each page of the pdf file or formally retracted.
PUBLICATION ETHICS
Authorship and contributorship: All manuscripts proposed to the TDAD should not be previously published or submitted for publication elsewhere. The studies or their summaries which were presented in a conference can be accepted, if it is stated in the Acknowledgement. Besides that, if the study is supported by an institution or produced from a thesis, this must be also stated in Acknowledgement.
Handling complaints and appeals: The Editorial Board of the journal handles all appeal and complaint cases within the scope of COPE guidelines. In such cases, authors should get in direct contact with the editorial office regarding their appeals and complaints. When needed, an ombudsperson may be assigned to resolve cases that cannot be resolved internally. The Editor in Chief is the final authority in the decision-making process for all appeals and complaints.
Intellectual property and Conflicts of interest / competing interests: The publisher protects the intellectual property rights (IPR) of all the articles published in TDAD and holds the responsibility to keep a record of each unpublished article. Editors are responsible for protecting the IPR of all the articles published in the journal and the rights of the journal and author(s) in cases where these rights are violated. Also, editors must take the necessary precautions in order to prevent the content of all published articles from violating the intellectual property rights of other publications. While submitting a manuscript, all authors have to declare absence or presence of any conflict of interests / competing interests by filling out the TDAD Copyright Form. If any undeclared conflict and/or competing are detected, authors will be asked for explanation by the Editorial Board. Editors, acknowledging that there may be conflicting interests between reviewers and other editors, guarantee that the publication process of the manuscripts will be completed in an independent and unbiased manner.
Post-publication discussions and corrections: Editorial Board will be ready to publish discussion via Letter to the Editor, and correction, corrigenda, errata when necessary, as well as retract articles that (the Editor and TDAD) deem unethical, misleading or damaging.
ETHICAL OVERSIGHTS AND BEHAVIORS
All studies need to be sent to TDAD via DergiPark electronic submission system only. Manuscripts that sent via e-mail, courier, post or by hand, which are independent of DergiPark, will not be considered.
Secretariat of the journal performs initial review, and is entitled to reject if not conformable with the conditions concerning the orthography, grammar, similarity report, or to return back to corresponding author for correcting, or to request re-form of the manuscript. Ethical behaviors for Publisher, Editor, Editorial Board, Reviewers, Authors involve the act of publishing based on above ethical principles and ensure expected standards of ethical conduct. These principles and policies serve the development and sharing of knowledge produced by the scientific method and impartially.
For Publisher: Publisher is the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD). The Editor-in-Chief represent the publisher. The publisher appoints TDAD’s editor, editorial board and the members of the international advisory board. TDAD is a new journal name and successor of the previously published “Bulletin of Earthquake Research Institute (Deprem Arastirma Bulteni - DAB)” that was alive during 27 years between April 1973 and April 2000 with 84 periodical volumes. The publisher is responsible to archive and protect past issues of the predecessor journal, DAB, for readers and researchers according to the principles of CC-BY 4.0. It also protects the copyrights of articles published by TDAD and supervises the violations of scientific publication ethics by taking measures such as plagiarism, abuse, conflict of interest, and so on.
For Editor: Editor is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the TDAD should be published. The Editor accepts ethical principles. Intellectual content of the manuscript can be evaluated at any time by the Editor. The Editor can assign editorial board or reviewers to start the evaluation and peer-review process of a submitted manuscript. Legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism can be constrained by the Editor. The Editor guides the journal’s editorial board. All information about a submitted manuscript must be strictly protected by the Editor and should not be disclosed to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, editorial board, advisers and publisher. Unpublished materials of a submitted manuscript cannot be used by Editor.
For Editorial Board: They can be assigned by the Editor. Editorial Board (EB) members accept ethical principles. They know importance of their decisions in increasing national and international respectability of the TDAD. The EB pay attention to the scientific quality of the TDAD and the originality of the published papers. They recommend indexes that the TDAD can be searched in improving its academic quality. The EB strives to meet the needs of authors and readers. They take decisions in cooperating with reviewers on the manuscript if peer-review process is completed. All information about the manuscript should be confidentially kept by the EB. The EB informs the Editor in case of a suspicion of publication ethics such as plagiarism, abuse, conflict of interest, copyright infringement. They also undertake to publish discussion, correction, explanation, withdrawal, and apology when necessary.
For Reviewers: Reviewers accept ethical principles during peer-review process. They conduct evaluation procedure objectively. Reviewers should express their opinions clearly with supporting arguments. They should also inform to Editor regarding substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review process must be kept confidential by the reviewers and not used for personal advantages. A reviewer must reject to evaluate a manuscript if she/he has conflict of interest with author(s), institution(s), material(s), possible result(s), etc. connected to content of the submission. Details are given in Notes for Reviewers caption.
For Authors: All authors stated in the submitted manuscript must contribute significantly to research, accept ethical principles of the TDAD and indicate their commitment on research data, conflict of interest and contribution rate/type of the submitted study at the end of “References” section of the template file. They must ensure that they have written entirely original works. Authors are obliged to participate in peer-review process, to provide retractions with list of references, or to correct mistakes. They should not send the same manuscript to another (or more than one) journal. Authors must consider that the manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to judge the value of the work. The raw data connected with the paper for peer-review process, must be provided by corresponding author if asked by the reviewers, EB or Editor. Proper information must be clearly indicated in Acknowledgement, Research Data, Conflicts of Interest, and Contribution Rate sections. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the study. The responsibility of the idea that exists in the published articles belongs to authors.
August 30, 2025
Page
139-151
