Ethics

Publication Ethics

An article must be prepared and submitted in full compliance with not only national and international laws of ethics but also must respect common standards of ethics accepted by academicians. Therefore, all parties carry the responsibility for respecting principles of ethical standards.

Author Responsibilities

• Articles submitted to Psycho-Educational Research Reviews must be original. Citations from other sources must be clearly stated.
• The names of the individuals who do not contribute to the study must not be included among authors.
• If there is a conflict of interest regarding the study, the process under Conflict of Interest must be followed.
• Raw data can be requested during the review process. In such a case, authors are asked to provide their raw data as soon as possible.
• Authors are responsible to obtained permissions from related individuals, organizations, etc. If necessary.
• A manuscript cannot be sent to more than one journal at a time for evaluation.
• No author names can be added after submission. Go to Author(s) Name(s) for detailed information.
• Author(s) must not contact persons involved in evaluation process during submission evaluation.
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Ethical Appropriateness Checklist

• If you have used data, tools, or procedures from previously published sources, have you obtained necessary permissions from persons or institutions that can claim copyright?
• Have you cited the information from other published sources appropriately?
• Have you obtained official permissions for data collection/use, etc.?
• Have you obtained consent letters from your participants or can you provide answers to the questions from the Editor regarding this issue?
• If you have used animals in your study, have you applied the procedures within appropriate limits?
• Have you taken necessary precautions to maintain the confidentiality and safety of the participants or other parties participated in your study?
• If there are more than one author, has each author read and agreed on the content of the submitted version?
• If there are more than one author, has each author agreed on the order of names in the submitted version?
• If you have used copyrighted materials, have you received copyright permissions?

Editor’s Responsibilities

• Contributing to and facilitate the evaluation process.
• Appointing unbiased and double-blind reviewers.
• Maintaining and managing a smooth and fast evaluation process.
• Storing all records.
• Supporting freedom of thought.
• Being objective.
• Managing the evaluation and publication process standing on intellectual property rights and ethical standards.
• Taking responsibility in controversial or conflicting cases.

Reviewer’s Responsibilities

• Reviewers should agree to review submissions only relevant to their specific fields.
• Reviewers should not access to information about author(s) identity. In case of accessing or receiving such information, evaluation process must be ended.
• The evaluation process should be completed in total objectivity and confidentiality.
• If reviewers believe that there is a conflict of interest, they should reject to evaluate the manuscript and inform the Editor on the issue.
• Reviewers can use the content of the manuscripts they evaluate only after acceptance. They cannot use any information from the manuscripts rejected for publication.
• Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.
• Evaluation process must be completed objectively on the content of the manuscript. Personal characteristics such as nationality, gender, religion, political views, or commercial conflicts must not interfere with the reviewers’ decisions.
• Reviewers should have a constructive and polite attitude towards submitted work. They should avoid degrading or offensive language in communication with authors.
• Reviewers should comply with evaluation deadlines and ethical responsibilities.

Publisher’s Responsibilities

• Editors are fully responsible for publication processes. Because editors hold the responsibility of decisions on the submissions and published articles, the Publisher declares and guarantees free editor decisions to be maintained.
•  All articles are published under Creative Commons copyright (CC BY). Author(s) allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles as the original source is cited. 
• The Publisher has the responsibility to take all the precautions to avoid scientific exploitation, plagiarism crimes against the Editor.

Protecting the Reliability of Scientific Work

Ethical considerations in reporting research results: A sound scientific method is based on reproducibility and verifiability. Data, including visual materials, cannot be manipulated, changed, or reduced in order to verify research hypotheses or to obtain desirable results.

In case there is a mistake in the published version of an article, the author(s) must announce the mistake(s) to the audience. When such a mistake is recognized by the author(s), the Editor is informed for correction. Each corrected version and the corrections made are announced to the audience on the Journal’s website.

Data storage and sharing: In case the reliability of the submitted research is questioned, author(s) are responsible to provide the data used to the Editor. If authors fail to provide their data, the submission is rejected and is not accepted for evaluation again. Authors are required to store the data, applications procedures, and other materials utilized in their submissions for at least 5 years. After publication, if other researchers or authors request, data can be shared. Before sharing data, information, codes, or symbols about participants’/subjects’ identities must be deleted. If a study is funded by an institution, the rights of the institution must be protected and relevant acknowledgement must be added. If authors desire to share data, there must be a signed letter of agreement between the author(s) and the owner(s) of the data regarding the aim(s), the method(s), the scope, the conditions, and the limits for the use of the data.

Re-publishing part of or full Data: Re-publishing data refers to when findings from an accepted paper are re-used in another publication as if original. Re-publishing is an act of violation of copyright and related regulations because an author cannot give copyright permission for the same work to more than one entity. The full length or part of a previously published work cannot be published again or cited over the appropriate limits. A previously published work or one with significantly similar scope cannot be submitted for publication again. Papers presented in conferences but not published in conference proceedings can be submitted for publication by stating the conference presented at in a footnote. Papers which have been presented and published in conference proceedings cannot be submitted for publication.

In case authors wish their work to reach other audience, the following conditions must be met to re-publish the results:

• The re-published version must be considerably shorter than the original one.
• A notification that the work has been previously published and relevant referencing must be clearly given in a footnote.
• If the tables, graphs, or other visuals that have been used in the previously published version are used in re-publication, this must be clearly stated and referenced in a footnote.
• The original work must be properly added to the references list.

Findings should be presented in unity and should not be presented in only some parts. Publishing multiple studies each of which cover a part of the same bulk of findings can be misleading. However, in cases where research has a wider scope, conducted during long periods, or has interdisciplinary focus, multiple studies based on the same data source can be published. When studies have interdisciplinary nature, publishing findings on one source may not be sufficient. If studies are conducted in a long period, findings obtained in different phases of this period can contribute to the field, and thus these can be published provided the phase is stated. In this case, the research based on previous phases needs to be cited. If a study conducted in long period is published following the studies based on the findings from previous phases, repeating the same findings should be avoided and quotes from such previous work should be cited.

The Editor should be notified when multiple studies based on the same research are submitted for evaluation. The editor decides whether the secondary studies meet the publication requirements.

Global or Self Plagiarism: Authors cannot use other researchers’ opinions or thoughts as their own. Similarly, authors cannot use thoughts, opinions, and parts of research from their own previous work without citing properly.

Protection of Participants’ Rights and Interests

Confidentiality of the information obtained from participants should be maintained. Therefore, submitted work must not include information about participants’ identity. Participants should agree to be involved in research and when there is a hierarchical relationship between the researcher and the participants (e.g., teacher-student, director-teacher, etc.), researchers must not pressure participants to give consent. Particularly, in case an academician perceives his or her students as “potential subjects”, this would lead to misleading or subjective data resulting from reluctant responses from students and to violating participants’ rights and interests. Therefore, a special care should be given not to force students to participate.

If a study is based on the evaluation of a product or a service, the author(s) must not have a conflict of interest or a commercial benefit with the institution or the organization. In case there is a conflict of interest or such a potential, this should be indicated in the study as a limitation even if it is thought not to influence objectivity of the results.

Protection of Intellectual Copyright

Authorship right is gained by contributing considerably to research and by taking the responsibility of a published work. Considerable contribution may refer to: formulizing research problems or hypotheses, developing research design or application procedures, conducting statistical analyses, interpreting results of analyses, or writing part of a study. Individuals contributing to such processes are listed among the authors of the study. Individuals who contribute to a study other than mentioned means are cited in footnotes explaining their contributions. These contributors can help research by helping to create data collection tools, giving advice on data analysis methods, helping in data collection process, assisting to reach participants, or conducting routine observations.

In order to determine the order of authors in author list, each author is evaluated based on his or her contributions to the study and the one who has contributed most is written at the top of the list. When the contributions of the authors are thought to be equal, the list is done in alphabetical order and a note explaining the order of the list is added. Organizational or professional status or titles are not considered as a factor in deciding on the order of author list.

According to Article 35 of Intellectual and Arts Copyright Act Number 5846 (and Act number 4630 that changed it), any type of information taken from other sources must be cited and referenced. Act Number 4630 states that:

“Article 35 – Other sources can be quoted in the following cases:

• Quoting sentences or parts from publicly known work in a scientific or literary work;
• Including themes, patterns, passages, or parts from its characteristics of a previously published musical composition into musical work;
• Including acceptable portions of publicly known work of art or other published work in a scientific work in a way that the included part or the whole is clarified and its content is explained;
• Including acceptable portions of publicly known work of art in scientific conferences or lessons and using projections to show in order to talk about or explain the work.

Quotes or integrations must be made clear. The parts of the work quoted or integrated must be clearly and properly cited.

In case the limits explained in the Act are violated, the act is considered as a crime and imposes punishment regulated in Article 71 of Act Number 4630:

“Article 71 - (Changed Article: 01/11/1983 -2936/Article 11; Changed Article: 23/01/2008-5728 S.K./ Article 138)

Violating intellectual and art work moral, commercial or relevant rights protected under this Article:

• Individuals using, reproducing, changing, distributing, broadcasting using any audio or visual means, publishing, or selling illegally produced copies, lending, renting, purchasing for commercial purposes, importing or exporting, keeping for non-personal needs, or storing a work of art, a performance, a phonogram, or a production without obtaining legal permission from its owner are sentenced to imprisonment between 1 and 5 years and are fined.
• Individuals giving their names to the work of others are sentenced between 6 months and 2 years and are fined. If this act is followed by distributing or publishing the work, upper limit of imprisonment is 5 years and no fine is applied.
• Individuals discussing the content of others’ work publicly without obtaining legal permission are sentenced up to 6 months imprisonment.
• Individuals citing other work wrongly, insufficiently or misleadingly are sentenced up to 6 months imprisonment.
• Individuals reproducing, distributing, or publishing others’ work, performances, phonograms, or products using other well-known individuals’ names are sentenced to imprisonment between 3 months and 1 year and are fined.

Individuals who commit crimes stated in Paragraph 1 of the Additional Article 4 of this Act and individuals who provide content information and continue to commit the crimes mentioned are sentenced to imprisonment between 3 months and 1 year in case there are no other reasons for harsher penalties.

If individuals who sell or buy illegally reproduced, distributed, or published others’ work, performances, phonograms, or products reports the names of people from whom they have obtained the work before prosecution process may receive remission or may not be sentenced at all.”