IJATE Publication Ethics Policy

We expect all authors to read and understand our ethics policy before submitting to our journal. This is in accordance with our commitment to the prevention of ethical misconduct, which we recognize to be a growing problem in academic and professional publications. It is important to note that most incidents of plagiarism, redundant publication, copyright infringement or similar occur because of a lack of understanding, and not through fraudulent intent. Our policy is one of prevention and not persecution. If you have any questions, please contact the editorial office.

Plagiarism Policy of IJATE

All papers submitted to International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education (IJATE) should fulfil the expectations regarding the authenticity of the paper. If plagiarism is identified, the COPE guidelines on plagiarism will be followed. There is a zero-tolerance policy towards plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) in our journal. Manuscripts are screened for plagiarism before, during, and after publication, and if found they will be rejected at any stage. After the review process has been completed and the manuscript has been accepted as a possible publication in IJATE, authors will be asked to submit a similarity report in PDF format by using a plagiarism software which determines the similarity rates such as iThenticate/Academic Paradigms, LLC-Check for Plagiarism/Grammarly-Plagiarism Checker. The Plagiarism-Similarity report must be in a PDF format for the entire text including tables, figures (excluding references). The plagiarism rate of the accepted manuscript must be not exceeded the rate of 15%.

Editors' responsibilities

Publication decisions

The editor is responsible for deciding which of the papers submitted to the journal will be published. The editor will evaluate manuscripts without regard to the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. The decision will be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the journal's scope. Current legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism should also be considered.

Confidentiality

The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

Reviewers' responsibilities

Contribution to editorial decisions The peer-reviewing process assists the editor and the editorial board in making editorial decisions and may also serve the author in improving the paper.
Promptness Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be disclosed to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of sources

Reviewers should identify cases in which relevant published work referred to in the paper has not been cited in the reference section. They should point out whether observations or arguments derived from other publications are accompanied by the respective source. Reviewers will notify the editor of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and conflict of interest

Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers.

Authors' duties
Reporting standards

Authors of original research reports should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

Data access and retention

Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.

Originality, plagiarism and acknowledgement of sources

Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited. The similarity report should be uploaded in PDF format by using a plagiarism software which determines the similarity rates such as iThenticate/Academic Paradigms, LLC-Check For Plagiarism/Grammarly-Plagiarism Checker. The report must be not exceeded the rate of 15%.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication

In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable. Manuscripts which have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by the journal should not be resubmitted to copyrighted publications. However, by submitting a manuscript, the author(s) retain the rights to the published material. In case of publication, they permit the use of their work under a CC-BY license [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode], which means material subject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor.

Authorship of the paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. The corresponding author ensures that all contributing co-authors and no uninvolved persons are included in the author list. The corresponding author will also verify that all co-authors have approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

All authors should include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and to cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper in form of an erratum.

References

Our publication ethics and publication malpractice statement is mainly based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011).  Retrieved from http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf

Open Access Statement

International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education (IJATE) adheres to the Budapest Open Access Initiative and defines its Open Access policy according to the definition developed in the original BOAI:

By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its 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. [See, http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10-recommendations]

IJATE views open-access to academic publications and research as an immutable part of academic endeavour. The publisher recognizes the essence of public good provided by the journal and hence accepts its responsibility as a public service to academic and intellectual betterment.

The publisher is committed to the open access to all academic endeavour and as such, accepts its duty to make published content permanently available and freely accessible by all sections of the worldwide academic community. The publisher does not charge any pecuniary fees for processing, submission, and publication of manuscripts. The publisher commits to the free and universal access to its published content in perpetuity.

The publisher via its host providing institution Dergipark uses Lockss for the archiving and preservation of its online content.

Authors retain their intellectual property: All articles published on IJATE are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license and the journal does not require a transfer of copyright.

Copyright

In addition to being available on IJATE, authors are encouraged to post any version of their manuscript in their institutional repositories or on their personal websites at any stage of the pre- and post-publication process. As an open access journal, we do not require authors to transfer copyright to IJATE in order to publish in the journal. Authors retain full control of their intellectual property and we use the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license for all works published in the journal. This means that anyone is free to share this material in any medium or format, and that anyone can remix, transform, and build upon the content, as long as they provide attribution to the content creator.

Archiving Policy

IJATE is accessed via Dergipark platform which utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

Publication Language

IJATE publishes articles written only in English.

Publication Frequency

IJATE is published "online" four times a year (quarterly) in March, June, September and December. If the Editorial Board finds it appropriate, a Special Issue can also be published.

Privacy Policy

Personal information entered into the IJATE site is used only for the specified purposes of this journal, cannot be used or shared for other purposes. This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record and the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.