Parents' experiences and support needs regarding sexuality education for children with special needs: A qualitative descriptive study

Authors are advised to read the rules and regulations below and edit their manuscript following the relevant ones before sending it to AUJEF. Manuscripts can only be submitted through the Dergipark system. Manuscripts submitted via any other medium and submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be evaluated.

Dear authors, please do not hesitate to contact us if you hesitate during the manuscript submission process to AUJEF. aujef@anadolu.edu.tr

Submission Files

1. Title Page

2. Anonymous Manuscript Template

3. Author Correction Form

4. Authorship Change Request Form

5. Ethics Committee Approval (Not required for review articles)

Research & Reporting Guidelines

Before submission, authors can consult EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators to produce clear, concise, and accurate manuscripts that are easy to understand and free of common errors and pitfalls. Manuscripts submitted to AUJEF should conform to the following guidelines as appropriate:

• PRISMA (& MOOSE) guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analyses http://www.prisma-statement.org/, with use of the RECORD extension for studies that use routinely collected health data (e.g., disease registries, eMR, administrative data)

• Qualitative research: SRQR guidelines

Article Types

Original (Research) Article

Reports of original research, with methods, results, and conclusions. Research articles should report on original primary research or computational methods or new experimental tests or procedures. In original articles, the abstract should not be longer than 350 words. The full text of the article, including all elements (abstract, references, and appendices) of the text, should be no more than 10000 words. In exceptional cases, do not hesitate to contact the editor. aujef@anadolu.edu.tr

Review Article

Overview of developments in fields or the current lines of thought. Synthesizes multiple sources of information and has a long list of references. Emphasis is more factual and less on opinion. Scoping review, narrative review, meta-synthesis, systematic review, meta-analysis, and other review studies are considered review articles. In review articles, the abstract should not be longer than 350 words. The full text of the article, including all elements of the text, should be no more than 10000 words. In exceptional cases, do not hesitate to contact the editor. aujef@anadolu.edu.tr

Letter to Editor

A letter, or response to a letter, sent to the journal to raise a point of interest, discuss a difference of opinion, or encourage participation. Express points of view on scientific matters and should not exceed 2000 words. Authors should email the Editor-in-Chief or editors before submitting this type of paper. aujef@anadolu.edu.tr

Submission Files

1. Title Page (Introductory information about the authors of the manuscript) (Title Page Template)

The title page consists of the following headings. Please fill in the required fields in the title page template and upload it to the system.

Cover Letter (Optional): What is the main strength of your article? You can write the points you want to convey to the editors in this section.

Title: The title of the article should be short and clear. Including a few keywords in the title is important for accessibility. Avoid abbreviations, formulas, and numbers in the title.

Running Head: It should not exceed six words—an abbreviated version of the article title. (Write the first six words of the article title.)

Type of the Article: Please select your article type (Original Article, Review Article, Letter to Editor)

Authors and Affiliations + ORCIDs of all authors: Author names, institutional information, and address information (e-mail) should be given in author order.

Corresponding author and address: Full Name and contact information including address, phone, e-mail address, and Twitter or Instagram (optional)

Presentation(s) or Awards at a meeting: Provide the organization's name, place, and date.

Acknowledgement(s): Verify and confirm that everyone who contributed to this manuscript is either listed as an author or acknowledged as a contributor in the acknowledgement section and that the title page details any professional writing assistance or others paid to provide manuscript support.

Source(s) of Support and Funding: Acknowledge all organizations that funded your research and provide grant numbers where appropriate. The statement should include specific grant numbers, Initials of authors who received each award, full names of commercial companies that funded the study or authors, initials of authors who received salary or other funding from commercial companies, and URLs to sponsors’ websites.

If the study was unfunded, please state: “The author(s) did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.”

Conflict of Interest Statement: Please disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) your work. If no such conflict of interest exists; please state: “The authors declare no conflict of interest”.

Author Contributions Statement (CRedIT Statement): Authorship provides credit for a researcher’s contributions to a study and carries accountability. Check the Authorship section above. The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section so readers can judge that the authorship criteria for each author have been met, and who is accountable for which section of the article. This list may be revised according to the research and article type. Possible contributor roles that you may use are listed below. Multiple roles are possible and encouraged. Authors should be mentioned with their INITIALS, after each role.

• Conceptualization– Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.

• Data curation– Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use.

• Formal analysis– Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.

• Funding acquisition- Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.

• Investigation– Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.

• Methodology– Development or design of methodology; creation of models.

• Project administration– Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.

• Resources– Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.

• Software– Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.

• Supervision– Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.

• Validation– Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.

• Visualization– Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.

• Writing – original draft– Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).

• Writing – review & editing– Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary, or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.

• While preparing the statement, follow the below principles:

• List all Contributions– All contributions should be listed, whether from those listed as authors or individuals named in acknowledgements;

• Multiple Roles Possible– Individual contributors can be assigned multiple roles, and a given role can be assigned to multiple contributors;

• Degree of Contribution Optional– Where multiple individuals serve in the same role, the degree of contribution can optionally be specified as ‘lead’, ‘equal’, or ‘supporting’;

• Shared Responsibility– Corresponding authors should assume responsibility for role assignment, and all contributors should be allowed to review and confirm assigned roles.

An example of an Authors’ Contribution statement using CRediT:

First Author: Conceptualization, methodology, software, investigation, validation, writing- original draft preparation, writing - review & editing, data curation. Second Author: Data curation, writing-original draft preparation, investigation, validation, formal analysis. Third Author: Data curation, writing-original draft preparation.

Ethical Approval: All manuscripts submitted to AUJEF that use data provided by human subjects/participants must ensure that they have already gone under investigation and gained the relevant Ethics Committee’s approval. The Ethics Committee's name, the approval date, and the approval number should be stated on the title page, the methods section, and the last page of the manuscript. The authors are also required to provide evidence (i.e., getting permission from the relevant persons or bodies when using questionnaires, scales, photos, or documents developed by others or belonging to others) that they obeyed the ethical rules and regulations during the data collection processes (in the Methods section of the Manuscript File. The name of the board should not be written here for blinding purposes). Further, the manuscripts must also state that the authors followed the relevant publication ethics and copyright policies. If the study includes human subjects, it must be no that international guidance, rules, regulations, and standards must be conducted in the research. The authors are not required to submit an Ethics Committee approval if they only submit a review study. In case of this, it must be stated on the first and last pages of the manuscripts and in the methods section that the current research does not require an Ethics Committee approval. The manuscripts including case reports should also provide the information that an informed consent form was read, approved, and signed by the participants. In the Title Pages file under the "Ethical Approval" section. The name of the board, approval number, and approval date should be included here.

2. Anonymous Manuscript

The full text of your manuscript is prepared according to the AUJEF template. (File Type= Full Text), (File Format: .doc or .docx).

The uploaded "Anonymous Manuscript File" should include all the following sections:

• Title,

• Abstract,

• Keywords: At least 3, up to 5 keywords

• Blinded Main Text (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Limitations, Conclusion)

• References,

• Tables: These should be embedded in the main document.

• Figures: These should be embedded in the main document

3. Plagiarism report

Plagiarism reports not exceeding 25 %. Plagiarism reports can be obtained from Dergipark during manuscript submission.

Check List:

• Manuscripts need to be anonymized before submission.

• Please ensure that the manuscript you send to AUJEF has not been sent to other periodicals for review or publication.

• The manuscript has been formatted following the AUJEF template.

• The authors are responsible for conducting a plagiarism check of their manuscripts using one of the major plagiarism software and uploading its report to the AUJEF System. Any manuscript having a plagiarism rate of over 25 % will be returned to its authors.

General Formatting Rules

The font used in the entire manuscript should be Lato, font size 9. The bottom and top page margins should be pre-set as 2,5 cm, and the right and left should be 2 cm. The text should be justified with no hyphenation breaks in words at the end of a line. The text should be typed as a single-column document. Paragraphs and headings should not be indented but aligned with the main text. Single-line spacing should only be used between the paragraphs.

Article titles should be boldfaced and centered in Lato or Arial, font size 18. Please use capitals in initial letters only, excluding the conjunction words, articles, and prepositions. The main headings (INTRODUCTION, METHODS, RESULTS, DISCUSSION, AND CONCLUSIONS) should be written in Lato 11, with boldfaced capital letters and centered. Single line spacing should be given before and after the main headings but only before the sub-headings. The subheadings should be bold, but only the initials should be in capital letters, excluding conjunction words, articles, and prepositions. The subheadings must be standardized and not include any hierarchical order. So, the headings in the manuscripts should not be numbered.

The authors must avoid using footnotes or endnotes unless their use is essential. Instead, the APA 7 referencing system should be used. If the authors feel they should use footnotes, they must prefer Lato, font size 7. Emphasis should be expressed using quotation marks (“ ”) or italics. Please do not use boldfaced characters in the text. Lists in the text should be horizontal and not vertical. The list should use Roman numerals [(i), (ii), and so on], not Arabic (1, 2). Direct quotes should be 1 cm left-indented from the main text and typed in Lato, font size 9. They should not be written in italics. Please refer to the manuscript template for example. The main document to be used for peer review may include the title, abstract, keywords, main body, references, figures and tables, and supplementary materials. The names of all authors and their institutions must not be included in the main document.

Abstract

The abstract should be written in Lato fonts and font size 8 with single line spacing, justified to both margins. Abstracts should be between 150 and 350 words. Three to five words, word groups, or expressions representing the manuscript should be given as keywords. Only the initials of the first word of the keywords should be in capital letters. No citations should appear in the abstract. The abstract should include the research purpose, methods, participants, and import and results.

Main Text

Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies should include the following sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions, and Discussion.

The Introduction section may include the conceptual/theoretical framework of the study, a discussion of the relevant literature, and the research purpose, including the problem statement or research questions. The discussion of the relevant literature should consistently analyse it, emphasize the gaps and inconsistencies in the literature, and discuss actions toward solving these problems.

The Methods section needs to include the research design or the type of the study (cross-sectional, longitudinal, survey, experimental, ethnographic, etc.), the description of the sampling procedure (including the description of the population), or the selection of the study group, data collection instruments and procedures, data analysis, and the issues of validity, reliability, and ethics.

The Results section should introduce the research results in the form of texts, tables, and figures and explain their interpretation.

The Discussion section of the main text should conclude the previous section, compare them with the relevant literature, and discuss the implications of the research results considering policy, practice, and future research.

Other types of studies can allow slight variations in sections, but they should not contain too many details and sub-sections that could distract readers’ attention and compromise readability.

Tables and Figures

Tables, figures, pictures, graphics, and similar aspects should be embedded in the text, and not provided as appendices. Please locate tables as editable text and not as images; however, figures might be presented in different forms as images, etc. Please use Lato font size 8 for tables and figures. While generating tables, ensure that the indentation under the paragraph tab is as follows: before and after 0, single spacing. Tables and figures should be left-aligned, and the text wrapping feature should be turned off. Table and figure numbers should be typed in Lato, font size 9 as “Table 1” or “Figure 1” (as bold), but the remaining text in the headings of the tables and figures should be standard as “Table 1. Demographic Characteristics of the Participating Middle School Students”, only the initials in capital letters, excluding conjunction words, articles, and prepositions.

Citations and References

Both in-text citations and references should comply with the APA guidelines as provided in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) (7th edition).

APA Manual 7th edition: The most notable changes

• The publisher's location is no longer included in the reference.

• Covey, S. R. (2013). The 7 habits of highly effective people: Powerful lessons in personal change. Simon & Schuster.
   

• The in-text citation for works with three or more authors is now shortened right from the first citation. You only include the first author’s name and “et al.”. (Taylor et al., 2018)

• Surnames and initials for up to 20 authors (instead of 7) should be provided in the reference list.

Miller, T. C., Brown, M. J., Wilson, G. L., Evans, B. B., Kelly, R. S., Turner, S. T., Lewis, F., Lee, L. H., Cox, G., Harris, H. L., Martin, P., Gonzalez, W. L., Hughes, W., Carter, D., Campbell, C., Baker, A. B., Flores, T., Gray, W. E., Green, G., … Nelson, T. P. (2018).

• DOI’s are formatted the same as URLs. The label “DOI:” is no longer necessary.

https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2018.1560449

• URLs are no longer preceded by “Retrieved from,” unless a retrieval date is needed. The website name is included (unless it’s the same as the author), and web page titles are italicized.

Walker, A. (2019, November 14). Germany avoids recession but growth remains weak. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50419127

• For ebooks, the format, platform, or device (e.g., Kindle) is no longer included in the reference, and the publisher is included.

Brück, M. (2009). Women in early British and Irish astronomy: Stars and satellites. Springer Nature. https:/doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2473-

Clear guidelines are provided for including contributors other than authors and editors. For example, when citing a podcast episode, the host of the episode should be included; for a TV series episode, the writer and director of that episode are cited.

• Dozens of examples are included for online source types such as podcast episodes, social media posts, and YouTube videos. The use of emojis and hashtags is also explained.

The singular “they” or “their” is endorsed as a gender-neutral pronoun.

A researcher’s career depends on how often he or she is cited. (x)

A researcher’s career depends on how often they are cited. (+)

Instead of using adjectives as nouns to label groups of people, descriptive phrases are preferred.

The poor (X)

People living in poverty (+)

Instead of broad categories, you should use exact age ranges that are more relevant and specific.

People in the age range of 65 to 75 years old

Use double quotation marks instead of italics to refer to linguistic examples.

APA endorses the use of the singular pronoun “they”

Reference:

Streefkerk, R. (2020, February). APA Manual 7th edition: The most notable changes. Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/apa-style/apa-seventh-edition-changes

Some Examples of Citing and Referencing

Journal Article

Edwards, A. A., Steacy, L. M., Siegelman, N., Rigobon, V. M., Kearns, D. M., Rueckl, J. G., & Compton, D. L. (2022). Unpacking the unique relationship between set for variability and word reading development: Examining word- and child-level predictors of performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(6), 1242–1256. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000696

Authored Book

Kaufman, K. A., Glass, C. R., & Pineau, T. R. (2018). Mindful sport performance enhancement: Mental training for athletes and coaches. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000048-000

Edited Book Chapter

Zeleke, W. A., Hughes, T. L., & Drozda, N. (2020). Home–school collaboration to promote mind–body health. In C. Maykel & M. A. Bray (Eds.), Promoting mind–body health in schools: Interventions for mental health professionals (pp. 11–26). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000157-002

Conference Session

Davidson, R. J. (2019, August 8–11). Well-being is a skill [Conference session]. APA 2019 Convention, Chicago, IL, United States. https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/a5ea5d51/files/uploaded/APA2019Program_190708.pdf

Dissertation From a Database

Horvath-Plyman, M. (2018). Social media and the college student journey: An examination of how social media use impacts social capital and affects college choice, access, and transition (Publication No. 10937367). [Doctoral dissertation, New York University]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Organizational Reports

In-text:

First standard citation (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2019), subsequent standard citation (OECD, 2019), in-text citation (if it appears for the first time) Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), (2019), subsequent in-text citation OECD (2012), citation for a paraphrasing or a direct quotation (if it appears for the first time) (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2019, p.16), subsequent citation for a paraphrasing or a direct quotation (OECD, 2019, p. 16).

In reference list:

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2019). PISA 2018 assessment and analytical framework. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/b25efab8-en

Webpage

Chandler, N. (2020, April 9). What’s the difference between Sasquatch and Bigfoot? HowStuffWorks.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/sasquatch-bigfoot-difference.htm

Webpage on a News Website (Section 10.16)

Machado, J., & Turner, K. (2020, March 7). The future of feminism. Vox.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/3/7/21163193/international-womens-day-2020

Webpage With a Retrieval Date

Center for Systems Science and Engineering. (2020, May 6). COVID-19 dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Johns Hopkins University & Medicine, Coronavirus Resource Center. Retrieved May 6, 2020, from https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Online Magazine Article

Thomson, J. (2022, September 8). Massive, strange white structures appear on Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/mysterious-mounds-great-salt-lake-utah-explained-mirabilite-1741151

Print Magazine Article

Nicholl, K. (2020, May). A royal spark. Vanity Fair, 62(5), 56–65, 100.

Online Newspaper Article

Roberts, S. (2020, April 9). Early string ties us to Neanderthals. The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/science/neanderthals-fiber-string-math.html

Print Newspaper Article

Reynolds, G. (2019, April 9). Different strokes for athletic hearts. The New York Times, D4.

Online Dictionary Entry

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Internet addiction. In APA dictionary of psychology. Retrieved April 24, 2022, from https://dictionary.apa.org/internet-addiction

Report by a Group Author

World Health Organization. (2014). Comprehensive implementation plan on maternal, infant and young child nutrition. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/113048/WHO_NMH_NHD_14.1eng.pdf?ua=1

Report by Individual Authors

Winthrop, R., Ziegler, L., Handa, R., & Fakoya, F. (2019). How playful learning can help leapfrog progress in education? Center for Universal Education at Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/how_playful_learning_can_help_leapfrog_progress_in_education.pdf

Press Release

American Psychological Association. (2020, March 2). APA reaffirms psychologists’ role in combating climate change [Press release]. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/03/combating-climate-change

Preprint Article

Latimier, A., Peyre, H., & Ramus, F. (2020). A meta-analytic review of the benefit of spacing out retrieval practice episodes on retention. PsyArXiv.

https://psyarxiv.com/kzy7u/

Data Set

O’Donohue, W. (2017). Content analysis of undergraduate psychology textbooks (ICPSR 21600; Version V1) [Data set]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36966.v1

Film or Video

Docter, P., & Del Carmen, R. (Directors). (2015). Inside out [Film]. Walt Disney Pictures; Pixar Animation Studios.

TV Series Episode

Dippold, K. (Writer), & Trim, M. (Director). (2011, April 14). Fancy party (Season 3, Episode 9) [TV series episode]. In G. Daniels, H. Klein, D. Miner, & M. Schur (Executive Producers), Parks and recreation. Deedle-Dee Productions; Fremulon; 3 Arts Entertainment; Universal Media Studios.

Webinar

Kamin, H. S., Lee, C. L., & McAdoo, T. L. (2020). Creating references using seventh edition APA Style [Webinar]. American Psychological Association. https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/tutorials-webinars

YouTube Video

Above The Noise. (2017, October 18). Can procrastination be a good thing? [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMwmBNNOnQ

Song or Track

Nirvana. (1991). Smells like teen spirit [Song]. On Nevermind. DGC.

Radio Broadcast

Hersher, R. (2020, March 19). Spring starts today all over America, which is weird [Radio broadcast]. NPR.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/817237429/spring-starts-today-all-over america-which-is-weird

Podcast Episode

Santos, L. (Host). (n.d.) Psychopaths and superheroes (No. 1) [Audio podcast episode]. In The happiness lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. Pushkin Industries. https://www.happinesslab.fm/season-2-episodes/episode-1

PowerPoint From a Classroom Website

Mack, R., & Spake, G. (2018). Citing open source images and formatting references for presentations [PowerPoint slides].

Canvas@FNU. https://fnu.onelogin.com/login

Tweet (Section 10.15)

Obama, B. [@BarackObama]. (2020, April 7). It’s World Health Day, and we owe a profound debt of gratitude to all our medical professionals. They’re still giving [Tweet]. Twitter.

https://twitter.com/

BarackObama/status/1247555328365023238

Open Educational Resource

Fagan, J. (2019, March 25). Nursing clinical brain. OER Commons. Retrieved January 7, 2020, from

https://www.oercommons.org/authoring/53029-nursing-clinical-brain/view

Blog Post

Rutledge, P. (2019, March 11). The upside of social media. The Media Psychology Blog. https://www.pamelarutledge.com/2019/03/11/the-upside-of-social-media/

Appendices

Each appendix should be displayed on a separate page after the references section.

 Update Date: 15.01.2026

The publication policy of AUJEF aims to improve and disseminate information objectively and respectfully. Peer-reviewed studies are the main content of AUJEF and support and materialize the scientific method. It is expected that all the parties (editors, reviewers, authors, publishers, and readers) participating or playing roles in producing a peer-reviewed product may also contribute to these processes to proceed on the right track. Aiming to arrive at this end, it is of utmost importance for scientific studies to follow ethical principles, rules, regulations, and considerations. AUJEF accepts the following ethical principles based on the guidelines and policies made by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All AUJEF stakeholders must adopt, embrace, and follow the ethical principles below.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Correction, Retraction, Expression of Concern
The editor should consider publishing correction if minor errors that do not effect the results, interpretations and conclusions of the published paper are detected. Editor should consider retraction if major errors and/or misconduction that invalidate results and conclusions are detected. Editor should consider issuing an expression of concern if there is evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors; there is evidence that the findings are not reliable and institutions of the authors do not investigate the case or the possible investigation seems to be unfair or nonconclusive. The guidelines of COPE are taken into consideration regarding correction, retractions or expression of concern. AUJEF editors take serious measures to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred. Thus, they do not encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to occur. If AUJEF editors identify or have grounds for suspecting research misconduct, they will deal with allegations appropriately. AUJEF and its editors are always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed. Authors have the right to request withdrawal, retraction, or correction(s) of their articles before publication. However, they can only request retractions or corrections of their articles within five days after their article is published in an issue. Otherwise, they will have to write a correction notice, which will be published in the next issue. Withdrawal is possible at any stage before publication. AUJEF never tolerates plagiarism and self-plagiarism; and has the right to check all submissions using tools such as Turnitin, intihal.net, and Ithenticate. AUJEF accepts manuscripts up to a maximum similarity rate of 20%. Except for exceptional cases, this limit cannot be exceeded, and any submitted article with a higher similarity rate than mentioned here will be rejected.

Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections

Expressions of Concern
An Expression of Concern is a correction or typo published at the editors' discretion to inform readers of serious concerns or potentially misleading information about a published article. We usually complete our investigations of a suspected case before issuing a report, although in some rare cases, we may state concern as an interim notification. AUJEF's editors-in-chief write expressions of concern. When published, a statement of concern is posted at the top of the article's webpage and linked to the article's publication record, similar to a correction. The publication of a statement of concern does not change the status of the related published article. Once a statement of concern has been published, the same article may be corrected or withdrawn, or the statement of concern itself may be corrected or withdrawn, depending on the editors' assessment of the information, data, and/or materials received in subsequent discussions.
The AUJEF editorial board informs the authors of the affected article before publishing a statement of concern but does not require their consent or agreement. The editorial board publishes data or other materials received from the authors as supporting files with the expression of concern. In such cases, authors are consulted and can choose not to to publish their dossier/materials; however, this may influence the editors' decision to resolve the issue with an expression of concern. The AUJEF editorial board/editors-in-chief may send a Statement of Concern to affected third parties. This may include, for example, the authors' institution(s) and the affected repository or another journal/publisher that has an article or submission involved in the case.

Correction
A modification or correction of previously published material; (sometimes called an "inaccuracy"). Correction refers to changes the author wishes to make after acceptance, during the publication process or at any time after publication. Authors have the right to request correction of typographical errors or other problems caused by them within seven days. There is no time limit for corrections other than typographical errors deemed essential. They should be made if the author decides that they are scientifically necessary. A correction is then created and published in the next available issue. All corrections should be sent to aujef@anadolu.edu.tr. The editorial board will review proposals for corrections. Once the corrections are accepted, this new article will be published in the journal.

Withdrawal
A retraction is a public statement about an earlier statement that will be removed from the journal. The retraction can be initiated by the journal editors or the article's author(s). However, since the editors are responsible for the journal's content, they can always decide to withdraw the material. Journal editors can retract publications even if all or some of the authors refuse to retract the publication. Only published items can be withdrawn. Publications should be withdrawn as soon as possible when the AUJEF editorial board is convinced that the publication is seriously flawed and misleading (or redundant or plagiarized). Compelling reasons may include plagiarism, multiple submissions, false claims of authorship, fraudulent use of data, violation of professional and ethical rules, and failure to disclose a significant competitive interest.

Authors sometimes request retraction of manuscripts when authorship is challenged after publication. Unless there is reason to doubt the validity of the findings or the reliability of the data, it is inappropriate to retract a publication solely because of an authorship dispute. In such cases, AUJEF editors-in-chief should inform those involved in the conflict that they cannot pass judgment in such cases. Nevertheless, they may be willing to publish a correction to the list of authors/contributors if the authors/contributors (or their institutions) provide appropriate evidence that such a change is justified.

Plagiarism Policy

Intentionally or not, plagiarism means breaching research ethics. Publishing a piece of work with similar or the same content as other studies without citing them is ethical misconduct and an offense against the law. The editorial board has the right to act according to COPE’s rules and regulations in case of any claim related to a manuscript that has been plagiarized, referencing manipulation, and/or data forgery. Manuscripts with a more than 20% similarity rate will be returned to the author without being included in the review process. The authors may submit their manuscripts after ensuring that the correspondence report of their respective manuscripts shows less than 20% similarity.

Plagiarism Action Plan and Journal Precautions

The AUJEF respects intellectual property and aims to protect and promote the original work of its authors. Articles containing plagiarism are against the standards of quality, research, and innovation. Therefore, all authors who submit articles to the AUJEF are expected to comply with ethical standards and avoid plagiarism in any form. If an author is suspected of plagiarism in a submitted or published article, the AUJEF's Chief Editor reviews the work first. This work is then reviewed by the Editorial Board. The AUJEF then contacts the author(s) to submit their comments within two weeks. If the AUJEF does not receive any response from the author within the specified time, it requests the investigation of the claim by contacting the instituon to which the author is affiliated. The AUJEF will take the following serious precautions against published articles that are found to contain plagiarism.

1. The AUJEF will immediately contact the university to which the author(s) are affiliated, in order to take final action against the related author.
2. The AUJEF will remove the PDF copy of the published article from its website and disable all links to the full-text article. The phrase Plagiarized Article will be added to the title of the published article.
3. The AUJEF will disable the author's account and reject all future submissions by the author for a period of 3 years.

 

Misconduct of Scientific Research and Publication Ethics

Plagiarism: Using other persons’ original thoughts, methods, data, or products without citing the sources or presenting another person’s work as one’s own partially or as a whole;
Forgery: Using data that does not exist or is being distorted;
Distortion: Distorting, spoiling, or corrupting research records or data; Claiming that some tools or materials have been used in the research that are not utilized for the study.
Altering, distorting, or shaping the research results to fit in the interests of those persons or institutions supporting the research;
Duplication: Using the same research data in more than one piece of work;
Slicing: Dividing the results of research into several pieces that violate its integrity and then publishing them as separate research papers;
Undeserved authorship: Indicating those persons as authors who did not actively contribute to the manuscript's production or not indicating the ones that contributed to the study in question.
Changing the order of the author names inappropriately and unnecessarily;
Not indicating/including the relevant information about persons/institutions/organizations supporting the research and their support;
Citing those dissertations/theses that have not yet been submitted;
Not following the ethical rules and regulations and/or not obtaining the necessary permissions before conducting research involving human and/or animal subjects. Not respecting patients’ rights, giving harm to animals’ health and ecological balance;
The misuse or abuse of resources, places, means, and tools that have been provided/allocated for the research;
Proclaiming misleading/fallacious information related to scientific research and publications.
 

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

• Author(s) must ensure the accuracy and truthfulness of the data used in the study; keep records of research processes and procedures neatly; and provide the relevant raw data and/or information in case the editorial and scientific boards require it.
• Authors need to ensure that their manuscript has not been published elsewhere or has not been accepted for publication in any other peer-reviewed journal.
• People who have not contributed to the study at the intellectual level should not be indicated/assigned as authors.
• Authors have to follow the related national and international rules and regulations if their studies include animal and/or human subjects (for example, the WMA Helsinki Declaration, PHS Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, The EU Directive on the Use of Animals); to prove that the necessary permissions and approvals are provided; to respect the privacy of subjects/participants.
• If the manuscripts submitted to be published are subject to conflicting interests or relations, these must be shared with the editor and the publisher.
• If necessary, provide an annex or error proclaim or withdraw the manuscript.
• During the peer-reviewing process, authors might be required to provide the raw data they used in their studies to the Editorial Board. So, they are expected to share the relevant data with the Editorial Board and to keep all relevant data for at least five years.
• Author(s) bears the responsibility to inform the editor of the journal or publisher if they happen to notice a mistake in their study in the early release or publication process and to cooperate with the editors during the correction or withdrawal process.

Note: All manuscripts submitted to AUJEF that use data provided by human subjects/participants must ensure that they have already gone under investigation and gained the relevant Ethics Committee’s approval. The Ethics Committee's name, the approval date, and the approval number should be stated on the title page, the methods section, and the last page of the manuscript. The authors are also required to provide evidence (i.e., getting permission from the relevant persons or bodies when using questionnaires, scales, photos, or documents developed by others or belonging to others) that they obeyed the ethical rules and regulations during the data collection processes (in the Methods section of the Manuscript File. The name of the board should not be written here for blinding purposes). Further, the manuscripts must also state that the authors followed the relevant publication ethics and copyright policies. If the study includes human and animal subjects, it must be noted that international guidance, rules, regulations, and standards are conducted in the research. The authors are not required to submit an Ethics Committee approval if they only submit a review study. In case of this, it must be stated on the first and last pages of the manuscripts and in the methods section that the current research does not require an Ethics Committee approval. The manuscripts, including case reports, should also provide the information that participants read, approved, and signed an informed consent form. In the Title Pages file under the "Ethical Approval" section. The name of the board, approval number, and approval date should be included here.

Ethical Duties and Responsibilities of the Editors

The editors and field editors of AUJEF should hold the following ethical responsibilities that are based on the guides "COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" and "COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" published as Open Access by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). These can be accessed on the link below: https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf)

• While fulfilling editorial duties and responsibilities, adopting balanced and objective behaviors, and approaching the authors fairly without discriminating against anyone based on gender, religious belief, political standpoint, ethnic background, or nationality.
• Evaluate the manuscripts sent to AUJEF based on the “manuscript submission guidelines,” the significance of the study, and its originality, and if they decide to reject a manuscript after the editorial evaluation, inform the authors of the rationale behind this decision clearly and objectively.
• Inform authors and allocate the necessary time for amendment if they decide that a manuscript needs a thorough revision due to several typesetting, punctuation, writing, layout errors, and some problems related to the referencing system.
• Take the necessary cautions and assess the demands from both sides if there is a conflict of interest. Assessing and evaluating the works submitted to AUJEF based on their content without providing privileges to any of them.
• Ensuring that all manuscripts go through a blind peer-reviewing process and that the authors do not know anything about the reviewers or that the reviewers have any information related to the authors. Handling studies on special topics like all other manuscripts go through. Supporting the authors’ freedom of expression.
• If the authors demand information about their manuscripts, carefully inform them about the processes and state of their manuscripts without breaching the rules and regulations related to blind peer-reviewing processes.
• Continuously updating the manuscript template, presenting and explaining what has been expected from the authors.
• Ensuring that all the published papers include the dates of sending and acceptance.
• Endeavouring to improve the journal's quality and contribute to its development.
• If there is a complaint about breaching an ethical principle, take the necessary action under AUJEF’s relevant policies and procedures. This gives the authors the essential opportunities to answer the complaints addressed to their manuscript, defend themselves, and impose the appropriate sanctions fairly and objectively.
• Inviting the reviewers to express that they do not have any conflict of interest with the author(s) of a manuscript before starting to review it.
• Renewing and expanding the number of reviewers while keeping their areas of expertise or specialties in mind.
• Excluding those reviewers who do not fulfill their duties on time or provide feedback and comments that are impolite and lack quality.
• Rejecting a manuscript inappropriate to AUJEF’s aims and scope.
• Finding and assigning new members for the Editorial Board who have the potential to contribute to its development.
• Inform the new members of the Editorial Board about AUJEF’s manuscript submission guide, explain to them what is expected from a member of the Editorial Board, and inform them about their responsibilities.
• Review the critics/criticisms of the journal and answer them if necessary.

Ethical Responsibilities of the Reviewers

The fact that all manuscripts are reviewed through "Blind Double Review" directly influences the publication quality. This process ensures confidentiality through objective and independent review. The review process at AUJEF is based on the principle of double-anonymized review. Neither the reviewers know and/or contact the authors directly, nor do the authors have any information related to the reviewers. The reviews and comments are conveyed through the journal management system. In this process, the editor assigns the reviewer's views on the evaluation forms and full texts to the author(s). Therefore, the reviewers doing review work for AUJEF are supposed to bear the ethical responsibilities listed below. Reviewers must

• To assist the editor in decision-making procedures, agree to review only those works in their subject of expertise and review the manuscript sent to them fairly, objectively, and on time.
• Fill in the relevant ‘Reviewer Evaluation Form’ and ensure that any information related to their (the reviewer) identity has not been reflected.
• Indicating their decision regarding whether the manuscript should be accepted for publication, along with the justification of this decision.
• Review the manuscript objectively and only regarding its content and ensure that nationality, gender, religious and political beliefs, and economic apprehension do not influence the review.
• Rigorously review a manuscript in an unbiased and confidential manner and provide relevant feedback to improve its quality.
• Review the manuscript in a constructive and kind tone, and avoid making personal comments, including hostility, slander, and insult. If it is seen that the reviewers’ comments are not of scientific quality, they might be invited to revise their assessment and feedback.
• Review only the content of a manuscript objectively.
• Protect the privacy of information provided by the editor or the author(s) and destroy the manuscript after the review process.
• Inform the journal chief editor if they think they encounter a problem that may harm the double-anonymized review process and decline to review the manuscript during the review process.
• Dispose of the manuscripts they have reviewed per the principle of confidentiality after the review process. Reviewers can use the final versions of the manuscripts they have reviewed only after publication.
• Be aware of the potential conflict of interests (financial, institutional, collaborative, or those between the authors or related to other relationships), and warn the editor to withdraw the relevant manuscript from the review process.

Ethical Responsibilities of the Publisher

• Like all other stakeholders, the publisher must obey ethical principles and behave accordingly.
• The publisher is responsible for taking precautions against scientific abuse, fraud, and plagiarism.
• The publisher protects the intellectual property rights of all the articles published in AUJEF and is responsible for keeping a record of each published product.
• The publisher accepts that the editor and editorial board are entitled to make all the decisions related to reviewing, editorial, and publication processes.
• All stakeholders should not hesitate to contact the publisher if they see or recognize unethical conduct.

Archiving

AUJEF uses DergiPark hosting services and an editorial workflow management system provided by TÜBİTAK ULAKBIM. The Dergipark system electronically saves each document and manuscript uploaded to it. Additionally, the editors assigned to manage the workflow of manuscripts are individually responsible for keeping backups, supervised by the Chief Editor. If AUJEF starts to use a different hosting service and an editorial workflow management system, all the backups will be transferred to that system, and access to the new website will be preserved.

Conflict of Interests

Matters in which persons or groups benefit economically or personally may also cause a conflict of interest. The reliability of scientific research and published papers is partly related to objectively handling the conflicts of interest in planning, applying, writing, assessing, revising, and publishing them.

Financial relations might include the most easily defined conflicts of interest, which may inevitably influence the journal's reliability and the authors negatively. These conflicts may arise from various issues, including interpersonal relationships, academic competition, or intellectual approaches. The authors may want to avoid commercial or non-profit sponsors that may restrict access to all study data or propose to interfere with data analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, publication, etc.

To prevent conflicts of interest, editors may try not to assign specific people as reviewers of certain manuscripts submitted by certain authors. The editor making the final decision about a manuscript should ensure they do not have a personal or financial relationship with the relevant author(s).

To make the reviewing processes independent of any unethical conduct, the authors are expected to inform the editorial board in case of a potential conflict of interest.

The editorial board of AUJEF promises to consider all these possibilities and strive to make the reviewing process as objective as possible.

Open Access Policy

Aiming to support the idea of accessing information most easily, AUJEF adopts an open-access policy and supports requiring peer-reviewed journals to become open-access, appearing in the Budapest Open Access Initiative signed on September 12, 2012. Thus, the open-access policies adopted by the editorial board of AUJEF can be found at http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10-recommendations. Budapest Open Access Initiative defines the concept of “open access” as [peer-reviewed works’] “… free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.” In this respect, authors hold the copyrights of their manuscripts and the final papers. The authors hold the copyright without any restrictions. Copyright transfer agreements and similar agreements are not requested from the authors. Solely to maintain integrity and quality, all AUJEF content is licensed under a "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-SA)" from 2020. This license terms are not binding for authors. AUJEF full-text articles are published online immediately after their procedures and are openly and freely accessible afterward. No fees or subscriptions are required for access to the full-text articles. Open-access policies promise great potential for researchers and readers when thinking of sharing knowledge/information in the expansion of scientific developments. Based on this perspective, AUJEF invites its readers to freely access and use its published works by referring to their sources and authors. The readers do not need permission from the authors or the publisher.

Creative Commons

All articles published by AUJEF are licensed with “Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-SA) from 2020. This license entitles all parties to use scientific work for a non-profit purpose under the condition of providing references. Open access is an approach that eases interdisciplinary communication and encourages cooperation among different disciplines. Therefore, AUJEF contributes to the field of education research by providing more access to its articles and a more transparent review process. The publication processes of AUJEF are executed by the manuals of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), National Information Standards Organization (NISO, Council of Science Editors (CSE), and European Association of Science Editors (EASE). Authors retain the copyright of their papers without restrictions, but they are responsible for the content of their articles published in the journal. Authors also grant AUJEF non-exclusive first publishing rights to publish their articles. Authors confirm that their articles' content does not bind the owner, editor, co-editors, or advisory board members of AUJEF. Authors declare that their articles are original and have not been published previously or are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. AUJEF is a fully open-access journal that provides free and unlimited access to the articles it publishes without restriction, subscription, or requirement. This benefit results in higher visibility, readership, and citation. An open-access policy also helps disseminate knowledge as widely as possible. Based on its open-access policy, the journal allows readers to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of its articles and allows readers to use them for any other lawful purpose. Thus, AUJEF lets researchers remix, adapt, and build upon the articles published on its website non-commercially, as long as they credit AUJEF and license their new work under identical terms. 

Authors who send their manuscripts to the Anadolu University Journal of Education Faculty (AUJEF) read and approve the responsibility statement's text on the control list screen when they upload their studies on the journal's online system. By marking the box “I warrant that it conforms with the items above” at the end of the control list, it is deemed to have accepted the text of the responsibility statement.

Author(s) declare(s) to approve the statements at below:

The manuscript sent to be published in the Anadolu University Journal of Education Faculty (AUJEF) is the author(s) own original work,

A part or the whole of this work has not been published or sent for publication elsewhere.

All the authors have read and approved the manuscript as it is. They all acknowledge that it has been sent to AUJEF for publication.

The author(s) are responsible for the content and information presented in the manuscript.

All approved rights such as patents, etc., and copyrights are of the author(s);

The author(s) can use the whole work in their books, courses, oral presentations, and conferences.

They have the right to reproduce the work as a whole or in part for their use.

That the text, figures, and documents in the article do not violate the copyrights of the third parties, the publisher is not responsible for any claims or lawsuits to be made by third parties due to copyright infringement, and all responsibility belongs to authors.

The Processes of Reviewing and Publishing Manuscripts

The reviewing process of the manuscripts sent to AUJEF proceeds following these steps:

The Editors review the manuscript to see whether its aims, subject, content and writing style fit the requirements of AUJEF (Maximum 10 days). The manuscript is approved by the Editor and sent to the Field Editor. Other manuscripts not approved by the Editor were returned to their authors/owners for revision and resubmission.

The field editor examines/reviews the manuscript and decides whether to send it to reviewers or return it to its authors/owners for revision (Maximum 10 days).

Reviewers are selected based on expertise and experience in the relevant field. They are given 15 days to review a manuscript.

If a reviewer thinks they cannot complete the reviewing process within the given time, they can ask the Editor for extra time or let the Editor know that they cannot review the manuscript due to various reasons, such as a time shortage. Doing these things helps the Editor assign new reviewers without losing too much time.

If a reviewer cannot review the manuscript assigned to them within the given scope of time, they are sent a reminder e-mail with an additional 10 days to complete the reviewing process. If they do not return the reviewed manuscripts within the extra time, that manuscript may be withdrawn from them. After that, it is assigned to another reviewer.

If there is a divergence of opinion between the three reviewers (one accepting the manuscript, the other rejecting it, and the different demands minor revision), the field editor examines the review reports and compares and contrasts the reviewers’ critics, viewpoints, and reasoning to arrive at a decision.

If the field editor still needs to decide after examining the reviewers' reports, the manuscript is assigned to a fourth reviewer.

The manuscript decision should be made within the first 90-120 days. Then, the authors are informed about the decision. The accepted papers will be published in the following issue of AUJEF.

Publication Fee Policy (Free of Charge)

AUJEF does not require any subscription publication fee or any other type of payment to access and/or use electronic information sources. AUJEF does not charge any fee from the authors during the publication process.

The Journal's Name

Anadolu University Journal of Education Faculty (AUJEF) is published with ISSN: 2602-2249 e-ISSN: 2602-2249.

Ownership and Management

AUJEF is published by the Faculty of Education, Anadolu University, a public university in Eskişehir, Türkiye—the Chief Editor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Servet Üztemur coordinates all the management and editorial processes. Please click here for more detailed information about the Management and Editorial Board.

The Website

AUJEF is hosted, managed, and published electronically on https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/aujef and aujef.anadolu.edu.tr.  These websites allow researchers and readers to access an archive of previous issues and other helpful information about the journal, editorial processes, and publication. AUJEF Management Board editors do their best to ensure high ethical and professional standards and keep the website up-to-date.

Publishing Schedule

AUJEF is an electronic academic journal published under a continuous publication model.

Update Date: 15.01.2026