PLAGIARISM AND ETHICAL MISCONDUCT
The journal Trends in Business and Economics attaches great importance to ethical values and academic integrity in scientific publishing and has adopted a zero tolerance policy on plagiarism and ethical violations.

All works submitted to our journal are systematically reviewed using the iThenticate similarity scanning software via the CrossCheck service, both during the peer review process and during the preparation for publication.

This application analyzes the similarity of submitted texts with previously published content, with the aim of preventing possible cases of plagiarism. Authors are required to fully comply with the principles of correct citation and referencing when presenting their own work or the work of others.

In this context, it is strongly recommended to avoid the following types of ethical violations:

Plagiarism: Using another researcher's idea, finding, expression, or method without permission or proper citation is considered plagiarism. This is a serious violation of scientific ethics and may result in the rejection of the work and, if necessary, the initiation of legal proceedings.

Self-plagiarism: Direct quotations or repetitions from a previously published work by the author without citing the source are also unethical. Even if the sentences are the author's own, if the relevant sections bear significant similarity to previously published text, this is unacceptable in terms of publication ethics. All previous work must be clearly indicated and, where appropriate, properly cited.

Salami Slicing: It is unethical to artificially divide findings and data from a single study into multiple articles. Articles based on the same sample group, method, or hypothesis but presented under different titles violate the principle of scientific transparency.

Data Fabrication: Presenting data that has not been collected or produced in the course of research, or including completely fictional findings and results in an article, constitutes a serious ethical violation.
All data must be based on actual experiments and observations and reported clearly. Data Manipulation/Falsification: This refers to the deliberate alteration, manipulation, or misrepresentation of scientific data. This includes behaviors such as arbitrarily removing statistical outliers, altering data points to make results more favorable, or tampering with visual materials (e.g., graphs, micrographs, radiological images).

Citation Manipulation: Inconsistencies between the reference list and the article text, the inclusion of sources with incorrect citations or irrelevant to the article content, are considered reference manipulation and are unethical.

The journal Trends in Business and Economics follows the international publication ethics standards and decision flow charts established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for all types of ethical violations mentioned above. In cases of suspected violations, relevant COPE guidelines are applied; in cases of serious ethical violations, actions such as rejection of the article, retraction, or notification to affiliated institutions may be taken.In this context, authors' full compliance with ethical values is of vital importance for the publication process to proceed in a healthy and reliable manner. All authors guarantee that the work they submit is original, unpublished, and prepared in accordance with ethical principles.In this context, authors' full compliance with ethical values is of vital importance for the publication process to proceed in a healthy and reliable manner. All authors guarantee that the work they submit is original, unpublished, and prepared in accordance with ethical principles.

In this context, it is of vital importance that authors fully comply with ethical values for the publication process to proceed in a healthy and reliable manner. All authors guarantee that the work they submit is original, unpublished, and prepared in accordance with ethical principles.