Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

A. Ethical Principles

Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education Journal (e-ISSN: 1303-0493) adheres to national and international standards in research and publication ethics.
It complies with the Press Law, the Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works, and the Higher Education Institutions Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive.
Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education Journal has adopted the International Ethical Publishing Principles published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

Furthermore, it commits to the decisions of the Turkey Editors Workshop.
• Press Law
• Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works
• Higher Education Institutions Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive
• Transparency and Best Practices Principles in Academic Publishing
• Turkey Editors Workshop Decisions

Publication Process and Ethical Responsibilities
Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education Journal examines submitted works for plagiarism:

Authors are required to provide a plagiarism report for articles uploaded to the journal system. The plagiarism report is uploaded to the journal system along with the manuscript. The editorial board may obtain a second plagiarism report using the iThenticate software for selected articles.

High similarity rates may lead to the rejection of a manuscript, both before acceptance and even after acceptance. An expectation is set for this rate to be 20% or less.
The publication processes implemented in Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education Journal form the basis for the unbiased and reputable development and distribution of knowledge. The applied processes directly reflect the quality of the work of authors and supporting institutions. Peer-reviewed studies are concrete and supportive of the scientific method. In this regard, adherence to ethical principles by all stakeholders (authors, readers, researchers, publishers, reviewers, and editors) in the process is crucial.

Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education Journal expects all stakeholders to carry the following ethical responsibilities within the scope of publication ethics:
The ethical duties and responsibilities listed below have been prepared taking into account the guidelines and policies published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (See COPE Guidelines) and COPE Workflow Diagrams.

If instances such as manipulation, distortion of data used in articles, or the use of fabricated data are detected, the situation will be formally reported to the institution where the author works, and the article will be rejected.

Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education Journal has the right to request output files related to the analysis results from authors based on feedback provided by editors and/or reviewers.

If the work prepared for publication is derived from book chapters, unpublished conference papers, or postgraduate theses, this should be explicitly stated in Turkish and English on the first page of the article.

For articles produced from conference papers, the author must submit the article with a signed commitment statement stating, "This study has not been published anywhere before and will not be published." Duplicating/republication/scientific deception/multiple publications are considered offenses. According to the TUBITAK Publication Ethics Board, republication is sending or publishing the same research results to more than one journal. If an article has been previously evaluated and published, publications other than that are considered republication.

Publication Ethics Statement Correction, Retraction, Expression of Concern

Editors/Section Editors of Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education Journal may consider publishing corrections if minor errors that do not affect the findings, interpretations, and conclusions are identified in a published article.

When significant errors or violations that invalidate the findings and conclusions are identified, editors should consider retracting the article.
If there is a possibility of research or publication misconduct by the authors, and there is evidence that the findings are unreliable, or the author's institution has not investigated the matter, editors should consider expressing concern.
COPE and ICJME guidelines are considered regarding correction, retraction, or expression of concern.

Plagiarism Action Plan and Journal Measures
The journal respects intellectual property and aims to protect and encourage the original work of its authors.
Articles containing plagiarism are contrary to standards of quality, research, and innovation. Therefore, all authors submitting articles to the journal are expected to adhere to ethical standards and avoid plagiarism in any form.
If suspicion of plagiarism arises in a submitted or published article involving an author, the Ethics Editor of the journal first examines the work. Subsequently, the work is reviewed by the Editorial Board.
The Journal then contacts the author(s) within two weeks to submit their explanations.
If the Journal does not receive any response from the author within the specified period, it contacts the university to which the author is affiliated to request an investigation into the allegation.
For published articles found to contain plagiarism, the Journal will take the following serious measures:
1. The Journal will immediately contact the author's affiliated university to take definitive action against the relevant author.
2. The Journal will remove the PDF copy of the published article from the website and disable all links to the full-text article. The statement "Plagiarized Article" will be added to the title of the published article.
3. The Journal will disable the author's account and reject all future submissions from the author for a period of three years.
Publication of Studies Based on Surveys and Interviews

Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education Journal, aiming to ensure ethical assurance in scientific periodical publishing, adopts the "Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" and "Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers" principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
In this context, authors are requested to adhere to the following points in the studies submitted to the journal:

1. For research in all scientific fields requiring ethical committee approval, ethical committee approval must be obtained. This approval should be stated on the last page of the article under the relevant heading in the method section and documented by uploading the ethical approval document to the dergipark system along with the article.

2. In research requiring ethical committee approval, information about the approval (committee name, date, and number) should be included in the method section, and additionally after the references section in the case of case presentations, information should be provided that the informed voluntary consent form has been signed.
Special Issue Publication Policy

Upon the request of the Editorial Board, a special issue may be published once a year in our journal. Articles submitted for inclusion in the special issue undergo an editorial pre-review. Subsequently, they are examined for compliance with the journal's writing rules and undergo a similarity check to prevent plagiarism. After these stages, they enter the peer review process using a double-blind model.

Unethical Actions in Scientific Research and Publication

Plagiarism: Presenting partially or entirely someone else's ideas, methods, data, practices, writings, figures, or works as one's own without proper citation according to scientific rules.
Fabrication: Producing data not based on research, organizing or altering a submitted or published work based on unreal data, reporting or publishing them, presenting a non-conducted research as if it were conducted.

Distortion: Tampering with research records and obtained data, misrepresenting the use of methods, devices, and materials not used in the research, not considering data inconsistent with the research hypothesis, manipulating data and/or results to fit the relevant theory or assumptions, distorting or shaping research results in line with the interests of supporting individuals and organizations.

Duplicate Publication: Presenting the same results of a research in multiple works as separate works in evaluations for associate professorship exams and academic promotions.
Slicing: Presenting the results of a research as separate works by dividing them inappropriately, without proper reference, and publishing numerous articles without proper citation, disrupting the integrity of the research, in evaluations for associate professorship exams and academic promotions.
Unfair Authorship: Including individuals who have not actively contributed as authors, excluding individuals with active contributions as authors, changing the authorship order without proper and appropriate justification, removing the names of those with active contributions from the work during or after publication, including one's name as an author without contributing.

Other Types of Ethical Violations
1. Failure to Acknowledge Support: Not acknowledging individuals, institutions, or organizations providing support in research outcomes in published works.
2. Unauthorized Use of Unsubmitted or Unapproved Theses or Studies: Using as a source unpublished or unapproved theses or studies without the owner's permission.
3. Ethical Violations in Biomedical Research and Clinical Studies: Not adhering to ethical rules in research involving humans and animals, and not respecting patient rights in publications.
4. Violating Legislation and International Agreements: Not adhering to relevant legislation or international agreements that Turkey is a party to in research and experiments.
5. Misuse of Research Resources: Misusing funds, spaces, facilities, and devices allocated for scientific research.
6. False Accusations: Making baseless, groundless, and intentional accusations of ethical violations.
7. Publication of Survey and Attitude Research without Consent: Publishing data obtained from surveys and attitude research without obtaining explicit consent from participants or, if the research is to be conducted in an institution, without obtaining permission from the institution.
8. Harming Animal Health and Ecological Balance: Harming animal health and ecological balance in research and experiments.
9. Failure to Obtain Necessary Permissions: Not obtaining the necessary permissions in research and experiments.
10. Failure to Inform and Warn Concerned Parties: Not informing and warning relevant parties about potential harmful practices related to scientific research.
11. Misuse of Obtained Data and Information: Not using data and information obtained from other individuals and institutions within the permitted scope and manner, not respecting the confidentiality of this information, and not ensuring its protection.
12. False or Misleading Statements in Academic Appointments and Promotions: Making false or misleading statements about scientific research and publications in academic appointments and promotions (YÖK Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive, Article 4).
Responsibilities of Stakeholders:

Readers and stakeholders can report any significant errors or violations of scientific research and publication ethics they observe in the articles published in Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education Journal by sending an email to aibuefdergi@gmail.com. We welcome such reports, as they provide an opportunity for improvement, and we aim to provide a quick and constructive response.

Responsibilities of Editors
Editors and section editors of Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education Journal will ensure the following ethical duties and responsibilities based on the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors by COPE, COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, and COPE's Ethical Flowcharts in cases of potential misuse or violation of publication ethics:

Impartiality and Publisher Independence: Editors evaluate submitted article proposals considering their relevance to the journal's scope and the importance and originality of their research, without taking into account the race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, nationality, or political views of the submitting authors. Editorial decisions are independent of the publisher.

Independence: The relationship between editors (Editor and Associate Editors) and the publisher is based on editorial independence. According to a written agreement between editors and the publisher, all decisions made by editors are independent of the publisher and the journal owner. Editors must reject incomplete or flawed studies that do not comply with the journal's policy and publication rules without any external influence.

Confidentiality: Editors do not share information about a submitted article with anyone other than the responsible author, reviewers, and the editorial board. Articles reviewed by at least two reviewers are evaluated according to the double-blind peer-review system, and reviewers are kept confidential.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Editors and members of the editorial board do not use unpublished information from a submitted article for their own research purposes without the clear written permission of the authors. Editors should not have conflicts of interest regarding accepted or rejected articles.
Decision to Publish: Editors ensure that all articles accepted for publication

Ethical Concerns
Editors will take precautions when ethical concerns arise regarding a submitted manuscript or a published article. They continue their processes without compromising intellectual property rights and ethical standards. Any unethical publishing behavior, even if discovered years after publication, will be investigated.
Editors follow COPE Flowcharts in case of ethical concerns. In case ethical issues are significant, corrections, retractions, or concerns related to the issue may be published in the journal.

Collaboration with Journal Boards
Editors ensure that all members of the advisory committee proceed with the processes in accordance with the publication policies and guidelines. They inform the advisory board members about publication policies.

Editors ensure the independent evaluation of the advisory board members' work. They can contribute to the appointment of new advisory board members and make decisions appropriately. They regularly interact with the advisory board to discuss journal policies and development.

Author Responsibilities
Reporting Standards
Authors of original research must ensure the accurate presentation of their study and results and allow for an objective discussion of the study's significance. The manuscript proposal should include sufficient detail and references.

Data Access and Retention
Authors should retain the raw data of their studies and provide it for editorial review when requested.

Originality and Plagiarism
Authors must submit entirely original works, and if they have used others' work or words, it should be appropriately cited. Plagiarism in any form constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Therefore, the journal requires a similarity report from all authors submitting an article.

Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Submission/Publication
Authors should not submit a manuscript that has been published elsewhere for evaluation. Submitting a manuscript to multiple journals simultaneously is unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Authorship of the Manuscript
Only those who meet authorship criteria should be listed as authors. The criteria include contributing to the design, implementation, data collection, or analysis stages; preparing or significantly contributing to the article; or providing critical revision. The corresponding author should ensure the inclusion of all authors according to the definition above and declare that all authors have seen and approved the final version of the article.

Declaration and Conflict of Interest
Authors should disclose conflicts of interest at the earliest stage, usually during manuscript submission by providing a disclosure form and including a statement of declaration in the article. All funding sources for the study should be declared (including grant/award number or other license numbers if applicable).

Peer Review Process
Authors are obligated to participate in the peer review process and fully cooperate with editors' requests for raw data, explanations, ethical approval evidence, and copyright permissions. In case of a decision of "major revision," authors should review and resubmit the paper by the specified date according to the systematic comments of the reviewers.

Critical Errors in Published Works
Authors are obligated to inform journal editors or publishers immediately if they find significant errors or inaccuracies in their published works. They should collaborate with editors or publishers to correct or retract the article as necessary.


Responsibilities of Reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decisions
Reviewers assist editors in making editorial decisions and help authors improve their manuscripts through editorial communication. They should highlight any missing references, works, sources, citations, rules, or similar in the reviewed article.


Timeliness: Any reviewer who feels unqualified to review the manuscript or knows that the review process cannot be completed on time should immediately inform the editors, allowing a new reviewer to be assigned.

Confidentiality:All manuscript proposals sent for review are confidential documents and should be treated as such. They should not be shown to or discussed with others unless authorized by the editor.

Standards of Neutrality: Comments on the manuscript should be made in a neutral way, and suggestions for improvement should be provided for the authors to use constructively. Personal criticisms of authors are inappropriate.

Acceptance of Sources: Reviewers should identify relevant published works not cited by the authors. Reviewers should also notify the editor of any significant similarity between the reviewed paper and any other article (published or unpublished).

Conflicts of Interest: Conflicts of interest should be reported to the editor. Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest with any author, company, or institution associated with the manuscript.

Blind Review Processes: Editors are responsible for implementing the policies of "Blind Review and Evaluation Process" stated in the journal publication policies. In this context, editors ensure that the review process of each study is completed fairly, impartially, and on time.

Quality Assurance: Editors are responsible for the publication of each article in the journal in accordance with the journal publication policies and international standards.

Protection of Personal Data: Editors are responsible for ensuring the protection of personal data related to subjects or visuals in the reviewed studies. Unless explicit consent is documented for the individuals involved in the study, they are responsible for rejecting the study. Additionally, editors are responsible for protecting the personal data of authors, reviewers, and readers.

Prevention of Possible Abuse and Misuse of Duty
Editors are responsible for preventing possible abuse and misuse of the review process. In case of detecting and evaluating complaints related to this issue, editors must conduct a meticulous and objective investigation. Sharing the findings regarding the issue is also among the editor's responsibilities.

Ensuring Academic Publication Integrity
Editors should promptly correct judgments containing errors, inconsistencies, or misleading directions in studies. They must take measures to ensure the accuracy of the content of all published articles and to prevent the infringement of the intellectual property rights of other publications.

Protection of Intellectual Property Rights
Editors are responsible for protecting the intellectual property rights of all published articles and defending the rights of the journal and author(s) in case of possible violations. Editors must also take necessary measures to ensure that the contents of all published articles do not violate the intellectual property rights of other publications.

Constructiveness and Openness
Editors should consider convincing criticisms of published works and demonstrate a constructive attitude towards these criticisms. Authors of criticized works should be given the right to reply. Editors should not ignore or exclude studies containing negative results.

Complaints
Editors are obliged to carefully examine complaints from authors, reviewers, or readers and respond in an enlightening and explanatory manner.

Conflict of Interests
Editors ensure that conflicts of interest among authors, reviewers, and other editors are taken into account, guaranteeing the independent and unbiased completion of the publication process. In studies with multiple authors, at the end of the completed study, a contribution ratio statement, if any, support and acknowledgment statement, and a conflict of interest statement should be included in the submitted system. Also, after the review process is completed, authors are asked to fill out and upload the conflict of interest declaration form.
If any of our editorial board members publish an article in our journal, all their duties in that issue will be suspended. Violation of the blind review system is strictly prohibited. Such publications cannot exceed 1/3 of the total articles in the issue.


B. Publication Policy
1. Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Journal of Faculty of Education is a peer-reviewed journal published online four times a year (March, June, September, and December), except for special issues.
2. Manuscripts should be uploaded to Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Journal of Faculty of Education via http://dergipark.gov.tr/. Uploading the manuscript by the author is considered as the application for publication.
3. All legal responsibilities related to articles published in Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Journal of Faculty of Education belong to the authors. No copyright fee is paid to the authors for the articles.
4. Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Journal of Faculty of Education reserves the right to make correction suggestions, publish, or not publish submitted manuscripts.
5. The publication language is either English or Turkish. For articles written in Turkish, an English abstract (750-1000 words) is required. For articles written in English, a Turkish abstract (750-1000 words) is required.
6. The manuscript uploaded to the Dergipark system should include Turkish and English abstracts of at least 150 and at most 200 words at the beginning. Additionally, 3-5 keywords should be included in both Turkish and English.
7. To ensure that authors' accepted articles can receive citations internationally, an "EXTENDED ABSTRACT" of at least 750 and at most 1000 words in English, titled under "EXTENDED ABSTRACT," is required after the abstract section. The extended abstract should be prepared after the peer-review process and can be uploaded during the language check stage.
8. The author's information (name-surname) should not be included below the title of the article. Information about who submitted the article to the journal can already be seen by the system administrator. This information will be added after the acceptance of the articles.
9. Manuscripts should be submitted through the Article Submission system at http://dergipark.gov.tr. If there are multiple researchers in the article, they should be added to the "Add Author" section of the system's second stage. After uploading the article to the system, revisions may be requested based on reports from reviewers.
10. Stages after uploading the manuscript to the system: a. The editor performs preliminary checks. The preparation of the manuscript according to the journal format is examined in preliminary checks. If there are no problems in the preliminary checks, an area editor is assigned. b. The area editor decides whether the manuscript contributes to the field and whether the field is appropriate. The area editor can reject the manuscript at this stage. c. For accepted manuscripts, the peer-review process begins at this stage. Two reviewers are assigned to the manuscript. It is ensured that one of the reviewers is an expert from a different university if possible. The other reviewer is selected from an expert at Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University's Faculty of Education. If there is no expert in the field, a second reviewer from another university can be selected. If the author of the article is from Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University's Faculty of Education, attention is paid to having both reviewers from different universities. d. In the peer-review evaluations, if both reviewers provide "Major" or "Minor" revisions, the reports are sent to the author, and revisions are requested based on the reports. The editor and the area editor decide whether the "Minor Revisions" made by the author are appropriate. For "Major Revisions," after the revision, the article is sent back to the reviewers who suggested "Major Revisions." The article is accepted or rejected based on the second evaluations of the reviewers. e. If one reviewer suggests "Accept (minor/major revision)" and the other suggests "Reject," the editor/area editor may reject the article or send it to a third reviewer. f. After the peer-review process, language checks (Turkish-English) of the article begin. Revisions are requested from the author based on the recommendations of language editors. After the revision, the article may be accepted or rejected for publication. g. Articles accepted for publication are sent back to the authors for final processes such as providing author information. At this stage, authors are asked to obtain a plagiarism report for the final time. The similarity percentage for articles to be published in the journal is 25%. h. Articles uploaded to the journal system cannot be published before 10 weeks from the date of the initial upload.
11. Accepted articles may be published as Early View. Our journal aims to provide open access and free access to research results for the entire research community.