Publishing Ethics and Responsibilities

Publishing ethics and responsibilities are defining the ethical responsibilities and roles of the journal editor, referees, authors and publisher. The ethical principles and rules below have been prepared in accordance with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (Committe on Publication Ethics – COPE (https://publicationethics.org/)). The aforementioned guidelines can be viewed from the links below:

·  COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors

·  COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors

Editorial Team of Journal

General responsibilities, principles and relations of the editors with readers, reviewers, authors, editorial board (field editors and editorial board) are as follows:

General Responsibilities

  1. Make an effort to meet the information needs of readers and authors.
  2. Ensure continuity in the process of executing the processes and improving the quality of the studies published in the journal.
  3. Protection of human and animal rights should be ensured in the evaluated studies. Responsible for refusing the study in the absence of ethical committee approval and/or permission for experimental research for the subjects used in the studies.
  4. Provided that freedom of expression must be preserved (the legal responsibility remains with the author(s)).
  5. Protection of personal data regarding subjects or images included in the evaluated studies should be ensured. Unless the explicit consent of the individuals used in the studies is documented, the study rejects. In addition, the author is responsible for protecting the individual data of the reviewers and readers.
  6. Business processes should be continued without compromising intellectual property rights and ethical standards.
  7. Show openness and transparency in terms of publication on issues that require correction and explanation.

Relationship with Readers

  1. Consider the feedback of readers and researchers and practitioners who constitute the target audience of the journal; should provide explanatory feedback when necessary.
  2. Pay heed to the fact that the published studies make a new contribution to both readers, researchers and practitioners and scientific literature and that they are original.

Relationship with Reviewers

  1. Ensure that the reviewers of the studies are experts in their fields.
  2. The information and guides that the reviewers will need during the evaluation phase should be provided.
  3. Ensure that there is no conflict of interest between the authors and the reviewers and that the parties do not know about each other (blind reviewing).
  4. Ensure that the reviewers act in accordance with the objective and scientific ethical rules in their evaluations.
  5. Determine policies that increase the performance of reviewers.
  6. Work on the continuous updating and expansion of the reviewers pool. Ensure the creation of a database containing the expert information of the reviewers.
  7. Encourage the reviewers to make their comments in accordance with the gentility and scientific language.

Relationship with Authors

  1. Keep the publication rules and spelling rules up to date for the authors who will send work to the journal and share the sample template with the authors.
  2. Articles firstly evaluated with the journal’s writing rules and in terms of the importance and originality of the work. If the article is rejected for these reasons, the reason should be clearly stated to the authors. If it should be revised in terms of grammar, punctuation or spelling rules of the journal; should inform the authors accordingly and allow sufficient time for the necessary corrections.
  3. Provided that, if the author requests information about the evaluation process of the study, feedback should be given as soon as possible (if it is not against the rule of blind refereeing).
  4. Information about the publication policy and evaluation process of the journal should be shared with the authors via the journal’s website.
  5. Unless there is a serious problem with the study (plagiarism, originality, language of violence, etc.), positive referee suggestions should not be ignored.

Relationship with the Editorial Board

  1. Convey the most up-to-date information on the journal’s publication policy and writing rules to the field editors and editorial board.
  2. Necessary information should be given about the expectations from the field editors and the editorial board.
  3. Should be in constant communication with the field editors and the editorial board and should be open about their suggestions for the journal.
  4. Inform the editors and members of the editorial board about the following roles and responsibilities:
    • Supporting the development of the journal
    • Writing reviews on their areas of expertise when requested
    • Reviewing and improving publishing and spelling rules
    • Fulfilling the necessary responsibilities in the operation of the journal

Reviewers

All studies submitted to IJEPHSS are evaluated in a double-blind peer-review process. Double-blind reviewing means that the authors and reviewers are not mutually aware of each other in order to ensure an impartial, objective and independent evaluation process. Articles are sent to the reviewers for their evaluation through the journal management system without any citation information.

The reviewers should state in the reviewing form the contribution of the work they evaluated and whether the article is publishable or not. Reviewers cannot directly contact authors. Evaluation forms and, if available, the referee’s notes on the full text are sent to the author by the editor.

Apart from these, the ethical responsibilities and roles of the reviewers are stated below.

  1. Only studies in areas of expertise should be accepted.
  2. When any conflict of interest is noticed, the editor should be informed and the reviewing of the relevant article should be refused.
  3. Opinions about the study should be made in the reviewing form given by the editor in a clear, impartial, constructive and polite language. Apart from the reviewing form, if deemed necessary, reviewers could be criticise on the full text file by methods such as interpretation/marking/coloring. But the reviewer’s identity must be hidden by him/herself. Personal comments such as hostility, slander and insults should not be made on the evaluation forms. When such comments are detected, the editor may request a review of the comments.
  4. Evaluation should be made objectively and only in relation to the content of the study. Nationality, gender, religious and political beliefs and commercial concerns should not affect the evaluation.
  5. Reviewers are required to complete their evaluations within the period determined by the journal management and are expected to comply with the ethical responsibilities specified here.

Authors

The author(s) submitting a manuscript to IJEPHSS should comply with the following ethical responsibilities:

  1. The studies submitted for publication must be in the fields of economics, business administration, finance, public finance, econometrics, literature, sociology, history and have an originality.
  2. All in-text citations in the study should be shown in the bibliography in accordance with the spelling rules. In addition, the bibliography should not include studies that are not cited in the text.
  3. The Copyright Transfer Form on the IJEPHSS website must be filled in with a signature, scanned and uploaded to the system.
  4. Articles submitted to the journal should not be sent to another journal simultaneously. Similarly, studies that are in the publication process of another journal or have been published in another journal cannot be sent to IJEPHSS for republishing. However, rejected studies are the exception to this rule.
  5. All authors cited in the study are expected to have contributed actively. For those who made non-academic contributions to the study, acknowledgment may be made at the end of the study; but these people cannot be shown as authors.
  6. The reasons for conflicts of interest, if any, should be stated at the end of the study.
  7. During the evaluation process of the study, raw data may be requested to be submitted to the editorial board, in which case the authors are expected to share their raw data with the editorial board.
  8. When an error is detected in the study, the editor should be informed. Collaborative action should be taken for the process of correcting or withdrawing due to error. In addition, authors cannot withdraw their work without giving reasons.
  9. The rights of the data used and the necessary permissions for research/analysis must be obtained. If available, a document showing that the test subjects’ consent has been obtained should be available.
  10. Changing the author responsibilities of a work whose evaluation process has begun (such as adding an author, changing the order of authors, removing an author) cannot be proposed.

Publisher

The responsibilities of the journal publisher are as follows:

  1. It should ensure the continuity of access to the journal’s websites.
  2. It should act with the awareness that the final decision maker for the studies is the editor or field editors.

Plagiarism and Unethical Behaviors

The plagiarism report from the iThenticate must also be uploaded to the system. If the manuscript’s similarity rate above 20%, it will not accepted; even if it is sent, it will be rejected by the editor before the reviewing process is started.
If plagiarism or unethical behavior is detected in the study, it will be cause to rejecting of manuscript. Listed below are some unethical behaviors:
• Mentioning those who did not contribute to the study as authors.
• Not specifying the people as authors who contributed to the study.
• Produced from the author(s) postgraduate thesis, project or submitted paper of the study; but it is not specified
• Slicing (publishing more than one article from a single study).
• Not reporting conflicts of interest regarding submitted articles.
• Deciphering the double-blind refereeing process
• In addition to the situations mentioned above, the situations specified in the Interuniversity Board Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive.


In Case of Encountering an Unethical Situation
An e-mail can be sent to editor@ijephss.com in case of encountering unethical behavior or content other than the ethical responsibilities mentioned above in IJPEHSS.