All process stakeholders (editor, journal team, authors, and reviewers) must comply with the ethical principles and responsibilities. Ethical principles and responsibilities in the Asian Journal of Instruction have been prepared considering open-access policies and guidelines published by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and Elsevier standards.
The scientific and legal responsibilities of all articles belong to their authors. The authors acknowledge that all their copyrights are transferred to the Asian Journal of Instruction. The article evaluation process in the Asian Journal of Instruction uses the “double-blind, peer-reviewed” principle. The reviewers cannot directly contact the authors, and the assessments and comments are delivered to the authors through the journal system.
All or some parts of the articles submitted to the journal should not have been published elsewhere and should not be in the process of publication. Papers presented at scientific meetings can be sent to the journal if the full text has not been published. Our journal requests a plagiarism report from the submitted articles, and the journal can also check for plagiarism when it deems necessary. Articles with a plagiarism rate of 20% or more are rejected. Fabrication of data, making up of research findings, manipulating research data to give a false impression, presenting the work of others (plagiarism) such as data, text, or theories, submitting the same study to two journals, splitting one study into several parts and submitted to two or more journals are all critical ethical violations. Necessary legal actions will be taken in the case of ethical violations.
According to the decisions taken by ULAKBİM TR, articles will be accepted according to new rules and principles. Obtaining "ethics committee" approval in the studies is obligatory. Ethics committee approval should be uploaded to the system along with the article. Information about the approval (committee name, date, and number) should be included in the method section and also on the last page of the article as follows: “In this ..... titled study, all rules were followed as stated in the directive of Scientific Research and Publication Ethics of Higher Education Institutions. Ethics committee permission of this study is taken with the decision of the Ethics Committee of ……….., dated ……, and numbered …..".
In addition, in the method section, it is necessary to include information about the permission taken from the owners of the scales, questionnaires, and photos and the copyright regulations followed for intellectual and artistic works. For articles without ethics committee documents (articles produced from master's/doctoral studies and studies conducted with research data obtained before 2020), the responsible author should write and sign a paper containing the “I guarantee that the ethical rules were followed in this research. I agree that the Asian Journal of Instruction has no responsibility for ethical violations, and all responsibilities belong to the authors.” statement and then upload it to the journal system. Studies that do not meet these conditions will be returned to their authors without being evaluated.
ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The editorial board is responsible for everything published in the journal and, therefore, should take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of materials and ensure the journal's continuous development. The editor should manage the procedures to improve the quality of the studies published in the journal.
The editorial board is responsible for preparing the author's guides to help the authors and updating these guides when necessary. How the peer-review process works should be explained in the journal system, and if there is any deviation from this process, the reason should be explained. Electronic submission systems should be designed in such a way that authors can easily access all necessary information. The editorial board is responsible for regularly monitoring the evaluation process and avoiding delays.
The decision to accept or reject a publication should be based solely on scientific content, and articles should be evaluated equally without any discrimination. The editor should not change the acceptance decision regarding the submitted articles unless there is a severe problem with the article. The journal should consider the authors' objections to editorial decisions and implement the procedures to handle complaints. The journal should provide descriptive and informative feedback to the authors.
A qualified peer review process should be conducted. Confidentiality of articles submitted to the journal should be ensured. A guide should be prepared to explain the expectations from the referees. This guide should be updated regularly, and a link to this guide should be provided on the journal page. The editorial board should take the necessary steps to keep the referee pool up-to-date and strive to have a large pool of referees. Referees should be selected according to the subject of the article. The identities of the referees should also be kept confidential. Referees should be encouraged to make their evaluations impartially and scientifically. Crude and unscientific referee criticisms should be avoided.
ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE AUTHORS
A responsible author should be selected to whom the reviewers' comments will be forwarded, and the readers can communicate. This author's contact information should be at the top of the article. Only one work by an author in the same issue of the journal is accepted. The student must be the first name in the publication produced from the thesis work. Changes in author names or order are not accepted after an article is accepted. Such an offer should not be made. Those who contributed to the article other than the authors should be thanked at the end of the article, and what they did should be explained.
The manuscript submitted for publication must be original. The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration. The article must not have been partially or entirely published before. A single study should not be split into several parts to increase the number of submissions submitted to various journals or one journal over time. Authors may be asked to provide raw data on an article for review. Therefore, raw data should be stored. The authors should have the necessary permissions if the research includes chemicals, procedures, and equipment with unusual hazards. If human subjects were used in the study, documentation of the volunteering should be available. When an author detects a material error or inaccuracy in their published work, they must immediately notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the article.
The authors mentioned in the article are considered to have contributed enough to the scientific study and therefore share the common responsibility for the results. The names of the people who took little or no part in the research should not be written in the article, and all researchers' names who contributed to the article should be in the article. Each author's contribution to the article should be clearly stated. No data written by others can be presented as the author's own. Authors should cite other authors' work appropriately if they have used their studies.
ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVIEWERS
Reviewers should only accept articles related to their field of expertise. Referees must complete the evaluation within the specified time frame. They should not accept refereeing to gain information and opinions without the intention of evaluating. Referees should ensure that the "accept/review/reject" proposal they give for the article is compatible with the comments given in the review.
Referees should evaluate within the principles of impartiality and objectivity. Referees should express their views clearly, supporting them with scientific arguments and necessary references. They should not include expressions containing insults and humiliation in their evaluations. They should not criticize the authors personally.
Reviewers refuse to use information obtained during the review process for their or others' benefit. They should not use it in a way that puts others at a disadvantage and deprives them of their rights. Reviewers should not contact the authors directly without the journal's permission and should not include another person in the evaluation without the journal's permission. Referees should notify the journal when they encounter any research and publication ethics irregularities.
September 27, 2023
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