A. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES

YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences is committed to the production and publication of scholarly knowledge in an impartial, reliable, transparent, and ethical manner. The journal conducts its publication processes in accordance with national and international standards of research and publication ethics, particularly the principles and guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The publisher, editors, Editorial Board, reviewers, and authors are required to comply with the principles of research and publication ethics throughout the publication process.

In cases involving fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, salami slicing, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, or other breaches of research and publication ethics, the manuscript may be rejected. Where an ethical issue concerns a published article, appropriate editorial action, including correction or retraction, may be taken. Relevant institutions or organizations may be contacted when necessary.

Responsibilities of the Editorial Board

1. The Editorial Board is responsible for establishing, implementing, and developing the journal’s publication policies.
2. The Editorial Board makes its decisions independently of the publisher and other individuals or organizations and on the basis of scholarly and academic criteria.
3. The Editorial Board ensures the proper implementation of peer review, evaluation, publication ethics, intellectual property, and research integrity processes.
4. It safeguards the copyright and intellectual property rights of authors.
5. It takes appropriate measures against plagiarism, data manipulation, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, and other breaches of research and publication ethics.
6. It updates the journal’s publication policies and author and reviewer guidelines when necessary.
7. It ensures that appropriate records and correspondence relating to publication processes are retained.

Responsibilities of Editors

1. Editors evaluate manuscripts solely on the basis of scholarly merit, originality, relevance to the journal’s aims and scope, and compliance with ethical principles, irrespective of the authors’ identity, institutional affiliation, nationality, gender, beliefs, political views, or similar personal characteristics.
2. Editors ensure that the evaluation process is conducted impartially, independently, and confidentially.
3. Reviewers are selected on the basis of their expertise in the subject matter of the manuscript.
4. Editors take into consideration potential conflicts of interest involving authors, reviewers, and individuals participating in the editorial process.
5. Personal information relating to authors and reviewers, as well as information obtained during the evaluation process, is kept confidential.
6. Editors verify whether the necessary documentation has been provided for research involving human or animal participants or research requiring ethics committee approval or institutional permission.
7. Editors assess allegations of plagiarism and other breaches of research and publication ethics and, where necessary, act in accordance with COPE guidance.
8. Where a significant error or ethical breach is identified in a published work, editors ensure that an appropriate correction, retraction, or other editorial action is undertaken.
9. Scholarly complaints and appeals submitted to the journal are evaluated impartially.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

1. Reviewers should accept only manuscripts that fall within their field of expertise and that they can evaluate impartially.
2. Information and documents obtained during peer review must be kept confidential and must not be shared with third parties.
3. Reviews must be scholarly, impartial, measured, and constructive. Personal, derogatory, or insulting remarks must not be used.
4. Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts on the basis of their scholarly quality, methodology, originality, contribution to the literature, and compliance with academic standards.
5. Potential conflicts of interest must be disclosed to the editor.
6. Reviewers who are unable to complete the review within the specified period or who believe that they lack sufficient expertise should inform the editorial office.
7. Reviewers should notify the editors of any suspected ethical misconduct, plagiarism, or significant textual overlap.

Responsibilities of Authors

1. Authors are responsible for ensuring that their work is original, scholarly, and consistent with the aims and scope of the journal.
2. A submitted manuscript must not have been previously published or be under simultaneous consideration by another publication.
3. Individuals who have made a substantial scholarly contribution to the work should be listed as authors; individuals who do not meet the criteria for authorship should not be included as authors.
4. All sources used in the work must be appropriately acknowledged in accordance with scholarly citation practices.
5. Authors are responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions for copyrighted third-party materials.
6. For research requiring ethics committee approval, informed consent, or other legal or institutional permissions, the relevant approvals must be obtained and the necessary information must be stated in the manuscript.
7. Funding, project support, conflicts of interest, author contributions, and information concerning whether the work is derived from a thesis or a previously presented conference paper must be disclosed.
8. Authors are required to comply with the journal’s Copyright, Open Access, Licensing, Archiving, and Artificial Intelligence policies.

Ethics Committee Approval and Research Permissions

Authors are responsible for obtaining ethics committee approval or other legal/institutional permissions before commencing research where such approval or permission is required.

For studies requiring ethics committee approval, the name of the committee, the date of approval, and the decision number must be stated in the manuscript, and the relevant documentation must be submitted to the editorial office upon request.

Surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, and similar research involving human participants, as well as studies involving personal data, must be conducted in accordance with applicable ethical and legal requirements. Informed consent must be obtained from participants where required.

Authors are responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions for the use of scales, questionnaires, photographs, images, or other copyrighted third-party materials.

Mandatory Author Forms

For submissions to YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences, the corresponding author is required to complete, sign, and upload the following documents to the submission system:

1. Author Declaration and Publishing Agreement: This document includes declarations concerning originality, prohibition of simultaneous submission, copyright ownership, the right of first publication, non-exclusive publishing rights, and publication under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

2. Additional Declarations Form: This document includes information concerning ethics committee approval, funding, support and acknowledgements, conflicts of interest, the author’s note, and author contributions.

Submissions for which the required forms have not been completed and uploaded will not proceed to editorial evaluation.

Reporting Ethical Concerns

Suspected breaches of research and publication ethics relating to manuscripts submitted to, under consideration by, or published in YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences may be reported to the editorial office.

Reports are evaluated in accordance with the principles of confidentiality, impartiality, and research integrity. COPE-recommended procedures may be followed where appropriate.

B. PUBLICATION POLICY

1. YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences is a non-profit, open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by TOKÜAD – Association of Social and Cultural Studies.
2. The journal is published twice a year, in June and December. Special or supplementary issues may be published by decision of the Editorial Board.
3. The journal publishes original research articles, review articles, and other types of scholarly work falling within its aims and scope in the fields of folklore, language, history, literature, anthropology, history of religions, sociology, and other areas of cultural sciences.
4. The publication languages of the journal are Turkish and English.
5. Manuscripts submitted to the journal must not have been previously published or be under simultaneous consideration by another publication. Articles derived from postgraduate theses or conference papers whose full texts have not previously been published may be considered, provided that this information is clearly disclosed.
6. Manuscripts must be submitted through the DergiPark submission system. Evaluation and correspondence processes are conducted through DergiPark.
7. Authors are required to have a valid ORCID iD and provide it during submission.
8. Submitted manuscripts must comply with the journal’s Author Guidelines and publication policies. Manuscripts that do not comply may be returned to the author for revision or rejected by editorial decision before peer review.
9. Research and review articles must comply with the length and formatting requirements specified in the journal’s Author Guidelines, including requirements relating to abstracts, tables, figures, illustrations, references, and appendices.

Peer Review and Evaluation Process

Research and review articles submitted to YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences are evaluated through a double-blind peer-review process. The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other.

All submissions first undergo an editorial preliminary evaluation. Manuscripts that do not comply with the journal’s aims and scope, publication policies, ethical principles, or Author Guidelines may not be sent for peer review.

Manuscripts that pass the preliminary evaluation are sent to reviewers with relevant expertise. Authors may be asked to revise their manuscripts on the basis of reviewer reports, and manuscripts may subsequently be accepted or rejected. The final decision regarding publication rests with the editor.

The evaluation procedure for translations, book reviews, notes to the editor, and other submissions that are not research articles is determined by the editorial office according to the type of submission.

The journal does not guarantee publication of any submitted manuscript.

Revisions and Retractions

Where revisions are requested by reviewers or editors, authors are expected to complete the required revisions within the specified period.

Authors’ requests to withdraw manuscripts are evaluated by the editorial office in consideration of the stage reached in the publication process. Withdrawal of a manuscript that is subject to an ethical investigation does not automatically terminate the ongoing ethical review.

Where a significant error or ethical issue is identified in a published work, a correction, retraction, or other appropriate post-publication action may be taken.

C. TRANSPARENCY POLICY

YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences follows the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, jointly developed by COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, and WAME.

Information concerning the journal’s publication processes, peer-review system, editorial structure, publication frequency, fee policy, copyright, open access, licensing, archiving, and ethical practices is made publicly available on the journal’s website.

D. FEE POLICY

YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences does not charge authors any submission, evaluation, peer-review, editorial processing, or publication fees (Article Processing Charges – APCs).

Readers may access the journal’s published scholarly content free of charge.

Detailed provisions are set out in the journal’s Fee Policy.

E. COPYRIGHT POLICY

The copyright of works published in YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences remains with the author(s). Authors do not transfer their copyright to the journal or its publisher.

Upon acceptance for publication, authors grant YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences the right of first publication and the non-exclusive publishing rights necessary to publish, reproduce, distribute, make the work electronically accessible, archive it, and transmit it to scholarly indexes, databases, and other academic information systems.

Authors are required to complete, sign, and upload the Author Declaration and Publishing Agreement during the submission process. This agreement does not constitute a transfer of copyright.

Detailed provisions are set out in the journal’s Copyright Policy.

F. OPEN ACCESS AND LICENSING POLICY

YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences is an open-access journal. Its published scholarly content is made available to readers without subscription or payment barriers.

Works published in YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.

Under this license, users may share and reuse published works to the extent permitted by the license, provided that appropriate attribution is given and the material is not used for commercial purposes.

Detailed provisions are set out in the journal’s Open Access Policy and Licensing Policy.

G. ARCHIVING AND DIGITAL PRESERVATION

The published content of YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences is archived through the DergiPark infrastructure and preserved for long-term digital access through the preservation systems specified in the journal’s Archiving Policy.

In accordance with the journal’s Archiving Policy, authors may self-archive the Submitted Version (Preprint), Accepted Version (Author Accepted Manuscript), and Published Version (Version of Record) of their works without any embargo period.

Detailed provisions are set out in the journal’s Archiving Policy.

H. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE POLICY

The principles governing the use of generative artificial intelligence and AI-assisted tools in scholarly publishing processes are set out in the journal’s Artificial Intelligence Policy.

Authors, reviewers, and editors are required to comply with the current Artificial Intelligence Policy of YAZIT Journal of Cultural Sciences.