PUBLICATION ETHICS AND EDITORIAL POLICY
1. Foundational Commitment and Editorial Philosophy
The Turkish Culture and Hacı Bektaş Veli Research Quarterly adopts the production and sharing of scientific knowledge at the highest objective, respectable, and moral standards as its fundamental publication philosophy. Accordingly, the journal strictly adheres to the flowcharts and the "Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Furthermore, it is strictly committed to the "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing" jointly prepared by COPE, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and WAME, as well as the ICMJE recommendations and the publication standards prescribed by the Scopus content selection policy. Compliance with these ethical standards by all stakeholders involved in the publication process—authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher—is not a choice but an inalienable obligation. In cases not explicitly regulated in this text, the current guidelines and flowcharts of COPE shall prevail.
2. Open Access, Copyright, and Financial Transparency
Open access statement: The journal is a fully open-access journal in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition and the open access principles and criteria established by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). All published content is freely and openly accessible to readers and their institutions; users are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles without prior permission from the publisher or the author, provided that the original source is appropriately cited.
Copyright and licensing: Articles published in the journal are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Authors retain copyright in their work and grant the journal only the right of first publication. The work may be shared with attribution to the source; it may not be used for commercial purposes, and no derivative works may be produced.
Digital archiving and preservation: To guarantee the long-term preservation of all published issues, the journal draws upon national and international archiving infrastructures (DergiPark, LOCKSS/CLOCKSS, and the PKP Preservation Network). Authors are entitled to archive the Publisher's Version of their articles in institutional repositories or on their personal websites under open access.
Financial transparency and fee policy: The journal levies no charge of any kind (APC) upon authors for the submission, evaluation, acceptance, or publication of manuscripts. All financial and administrative processes are transparent; no hidden or subsequently arising fee may be requested at any stage.
3. Responsibilities of the Publisher
The journal is published by Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University. The publisher upholds the principle of editorial independence without compromise; editorial decisions are entirely free of commercial concerns and of institutional or political influence. The publisher guarantees that editorial processes operate soundly, transparently, and on the basis of scholarly merit, in conformity with the universal norms of academic publishing; it provides the editorial board with institutional support in the investigation of alleged misconduct and ensures that any correction, withdrawal, or retraction is recorded permanently.
4. Responsibilities of the Editorial Board and the Editor-in-Chief
Editorial decisions and impartiality: Editors evaluate submissions solely on the basis of academic merit, significance, originality, validity, methodological soundness, and clarity and the journal's scope, independent of the authors' race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, institutional affiliation, or political outlook. The final publication decision rests with the editor-in-chief.
Confidentiality and double-blind review: The journal operates a double-blind peer-review system. Editors and board members undertake not to disclose any information concerning a submission to third parties other than the corresponding author, the assigned reviewers, and editorial advisers.
Conflict of interest: Where an editor has any conflict of interest with the authors or the subject of a submission, that editor recuses themselves and transfers the file to another board member. Unpublished data in submissions may not be used in the editors' own research without the author's express written consent.
Response to misconduct: Editors are obliged, upon any suspicion of plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, improper authorship, or the like, to initiate an investigation without delay in accordance with the COPE flowcharts. The investigation is conducted confidentially until resolved, and its outcome may lead to correction, withdrawal, retraction, or notification of the author's institution.
5. Responsibilities of Reviewers
Competence and contribution: Peer review is the principal safeguard of the editorial decision and of the scholarly quality of the work. Reviewers who consider a submission outside their expertise, or who cannot complete the review within the stipulated period, must promptly inform the editor and ask to be excused.
Confidentiality: Every manuscript received for review has the status of a confidential document; it may not be shared with or discussed by others unless authorised by the editor.
Objectivity: Reviews must be conducted with complete objectivity. Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable; reviewers must express their views with supporting argument, in clear and academic language.
Acknowledgement of sources and conflict of interest: Reviewers must identify relevant published work not cited by the authors, and must bring to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under review and any previously published work. A reviewer who recognises a conflict of interest with the work under review must decline the assignment.
6. Responsibilities and Obligations of Authors
Originality and plagiarism (zero tolerance): The journal adopts a zero-tolerance policy on plagiarism. Before the evaluation process begins, authors must upload a similarity report generated by iThenticate or Turnitin. The similarity rate (excluding the bibliography) must not exceed 5% from any single source or 20% in total; where the rate exceeds the editorial thresholds, the work is rejected outright at the preliminary stage. Plagiarism, self-plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, and salami slicing of any kind constitute serious ethical violations.
Author eligibility (doctoral requirement): It is a fundamental condition that the corresponding author hold at least a doctoral degree. Doctoral candidates and researchers who have not yet attained the doctorate may submit only jointly with an author who holds a doctoral degree. This condition is intended to safeguard the journal's level of scholarly maturity and methodological competence.
Authorship criteria and contribution statement: Authorship is restricted to those who have made an intellectual and substantial contribution to the design, conduct, analysis, or interpretation of the work. The inclusion of non-contributors (gift/honorary authorship) and the exclusion of genuine contributors (ghost authorship) are strictly prohibited. For all works with two or more authors, an Author Contribution Statement defining each author's role according to the CRediT taxonomy must be completed and submitted with the manuscript. All authors are deemed to have seen and approved the submitted version; the order of authorship and the corresponding author are agreed upon prior to submission.
Publication interval: In order to preserve the diversity of the journal's contents and the balanced distribution of the editorial workload, once an author's work has been published—whether single- or multi-authored—at least two years must have elapsed from the date of that publication before a further submission by the same author may be published.
Multiple, redundant, or simultaneous submission: The simultaneous submission of a work based on the same research to more than one journal, or the resubmission of previously published work, constitutes a serious ethical violation and is rejected outright.
Data access and retention: Authors may be required to provide the raw data associated with the work for editorial review, and are obliged to retain such data for a reasonable period after publication.
Conflict of interest and funding declaration: Authors must openly declare any financial support or conflict of interest capable of influencing the results or interpretation of the work; the name of the supporting body and the project number must be stated in the article.
Correction of fundamental errors: Where an author discovers a significant error in published work, that author is obliged to inform the editor promptly and to cooperate in withdrawing the work or in issuing an appropriate erratum.
7. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Model (LLM) Policy
Artificial-intelligence tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) and large language models may under no circumstances be listed as authors or be cited, since authorship entails the capacity to bear legal and ethical responsibility. Such tools may be used only to improve language and expression (proofreading) or for technical formatting; the scholarly thesis, argumentation, source analysis, and interpretation of the work may not be delegated to artificial intelligence. Authors who have used an AI tool in the research or writing process must declare this through the AI Use Declaration Form and, with full transparency, in the methodology or acknowledgements section of the article (stating the tool's name, version, and the purpose and scope of its use). All legal and academic responsibility for any AI-generated data errors (hallucinations), citation inaccuracies, or instances of plagiarism rests entirely with the author.
8. Ethics Committee Approval and Research Ethics
In accordance with the criteria of TR Dizin and international standards, ethics committee approval must be obtained and documented for research conducted on human participants by means of surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation, experiment, or similar data-collection instruments. The approval document must be uploaded with the submission; the name of the approving board, together with the date and decision/protocol number, must be stated explicitly in the methodology section. Informed consent must be obtained from participants, and the principle of confidentiality observed. Studies completed before 2020 whose raw data were generated prior to that date, and documentary analyses drawn from library or archival sources that do not require ethics committee approval under the applicable regulations, are exempt from this obligation; this circumstance must, however, be declared at the time of submission.
9. Mandatory Declarations and Forms
The following documents must be uploaded in full for a submission to enter scholarly evaluation:
(a) Manuscript Pre-submisison and Author Information Form (signed by all authors);
(b) Author Contribution Statement and AI Use Declaration Form (per the CRediT taxonomy; mandatory for all works with two or more authors);
(c) Ethics Committee Approval document (for research requiring it);
(d) Similarity/Plagiarism Report (iThenticate or Turnitin).
Work derived from a thesis, conference paper, or book chapter must be declared explicitly on the first page, together with the title, supervisor, type, institution, and date of the source.
10. Appeals and Complaints
Authors may submit reasoned appeals against editorial decisions in writing to the editor-in-chief. Appeals and ethical complaints are assessed within the framework of the COPE flowcharts, with the views of the relevant parties obtained and, where necessary, independent expert opinion sought. The course and outcome of the process are communicated in writing to the complainant.
11. Corrections, Withdrawals, and Retractions
Correction (Erratum/Corrigendum): Issued for typographical errors, omissions in the author list, or technical deviations that do not vitiate the scholarly validity of the work but may mislead the reader; it is bidirectionally linked to the original article.
Withdrawal: Applicable only to works that have been accepted but not yet finally published (at the early-view stage), upon detection of duplicate publication, serious error, or ethical violation.
Retraction: Applied to published works upon detection of deliberate data manipulation, fabricated data, severe plagiarism, or a major ethical violation confirmed by independent review. The retraction decision is announced publicly; a "RETRACTED" watermark is added to every page of the article; the metadata and text remain accessible but are linked to the statement of grounds for retraction; and the relevant institutions are notified in accordance with the COPE guidelines.
12. Intellectual Property, Privacy, and Advertising Policy
Authors are responsible for obtaining the permissions required to use third-party copyrighted material (images, tables, extended quotations, etc.). The journal processes personal data solely for the declared purposes of publication and does not share it with third parties. The journal carries no advertising in its content, and editorial decisions are influenced by no commercial relationship whatsoever.
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