1) What are the basic characteristics of the Journal?
BUJSS is a national scientific and peer-reviewed journal.

2) What is the publication frequency?
BUJSS is a biannual journal. It is published in June and December.

3) What languages can I submit my paper in?
BUJSS accepts papers in both Turkish and English.

4) Are authors charged any publication fees?
Authors submitting their manuscripts to BUJSS are not charged any fees.

5) What are the fields covered by the Journal?
Beykent University's Journal of Social Sciences (BUJSS) covers original scientific works from all fields of social sciences and sub-fields thereof, e.g. economics, banking, business administration, finance, psychology, political science, sociocultural anthropology, sociology, history, international relations and cultural studies, languages, literature, and comparative literature, etc.

6) I sent a manuscript to the Journal. What will happen next?
Manuscripts sent to BUJSS go through Initial Check, Review, and Copy Editing stages. Initial Check for manuscripts sent to BUJSS involves checks for structural and formatting requirements detailed in the Style Guide, and the required documents for manuscripts (Full Text, Ethics Committee Approval, Copyright Transfer Form), and relevant signatures. Manuscripts completing the Initial Check successfully with correct structure and formatting and no missing documents are sent to two reviewers minimum and three reviewers maximum depending on the field of specialty. In this stage, which is called the Review Process, reviewers assigned as per the Double-Blind Peer Review Model where author and reviewer information is kept hidden see and evaluate the manuscripts. If any revisions or corrections are required as a result of the peer review process, authors are asked to revise and re-submit their manuscripts. If at least two reviewers approve of the manuscript, it hen proceeds to the Copy Edit stage. Copy Editing stage is where the final checks and proofreading take place.

7) When are the articles completing all the stages successfully and receiving a publication decision from the Editorial Board published?
Date of publication of the articles completing the above processes successfully depends on the number of papers awaiting publication. The Editorial Board makes every effort to ensure the publication of the articles in this stage at the earliest time possible. Articles are put in order of publication in this stage based on their respective manuscript submission dates.

8) After I submit my manuscript, I see that the process completion date has already passed or is constantly updated. What does this mean?
When a manuscript is submitted, it goes through the stages of initial check, reviewer invitation, peer review (and author revisions if any), decision pending, and article in press. As the status of the paper changes from one of these stages to another one, a predetermined date is assigned. However, processes may not be completed until that predicted date. For instance, even if the reviewers are assigned, they may not respond within the specified time limit. In such cases, dates may be extended or new reviewers may be assigned. In any case, the predicted process completion date will be updated. This is a normal procedure.

9) Reviewers decided that my manuscript be accepted. Can you send me the DOI number right away?
The issue in which a particular article will be published is final depending on the completion date of the manuscript processes, manuscript submission date, and the official approval of the Editorial Board, and the DOI number is obtained after all those stages. Even if the reviewers decide in favor of the acceptance of the manuscript, publication is subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board. Therefore, it is not possible to obtain a DOI immediately after a reviewer decision.

10) Can the same author(s) publish more than one articles in the same issue?
It is not possible in terms of ethics. On the other hand, several articles by the same author(s) may be considered for publication in the same issue with the special approval of the Editorial Board and the Editor-in-Chief. This applies only to special cases and situations requiring initiatives to be taken.

11) How will I be notified of the progress after submission? Do I need to send a query to track it via e-mail or some other means?
Once a submission is received and being processed, DergiPark's system sends e-mails to all relevant persons such as the authors, reviewers, proofreaders, etc. as the manuscript goes through each stage. E-mails to the authors are sent to their e-mail addresses they used to sign up or log in to the system to send their manuscripts. For an easy and up-to-date progress check, it would be enough to check those e-mails.

12) Are the authors allowed to withdraw their papers from the Journal at any time?
BUJSS allows authors to withdraw their manuscripts only at the initial check stage of the manuscript evaluation process consisting of the initial check, review, and copy editing stages. Manuscripts at the review and copy editing stages cannot be withdrawn without the Editorial Board's permission.

13) I want to suggest a reviewer for the manuscript I have sent, or will send, to the Journal. Can I do that?
BUJSS adopts the double-blind peer review model. Thus, reviewer recommendations are not accepted.

14) Can the authors request information as to which reviewers are assigned to their manuscripts?
Reviewer details are not shared with the authors in any way.

15) As per the TR Index Journal Evaluation Criteria, must all papers have an ethics committee approval?
No. The said Criteria makes a distinction saying research papers "requiring an Ethics Committee Approval". Following are the types of research requiring an Ethics Committee Approval:
• Any qualitative or quantitative studies with data collection using questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, observations, experiments, and interview techniques,
• Research using humans or animals (including materials/data) for experimental or other scientific purposes,
• Clinical research on humans,
• Animal studies,
• Retrospective studies in accordance with the Law on Personal Data Protection,
Furthermore, authors should
• State in their case reports that they have taken "Informed Consent Forms" from the participants,
• Get the rightful owner's permission and state in the manuscript that they have such permission if they use scales, questionnaires, and photographs owned by others, and
• State that they have adhered to the copyright regulations while using the intellectual and artistic works.

16) Should I get a retrospective ethical approval for the publications written using projects and theses/dissertations completed in the past?
No retrospective ethical approval is required for the papers using research data from before 2020, created from theses/dissertations, which should be stated in the paper, and submitted to and accepted by the Journal last year, but not yet published therein.

17) Have the TR Index Evaluation Criteria restricted the publications outside universities?
No. Researchers who are not members of a university may apply to their local Ethics Committee for their research as well.

18) 5 days after my article was published I noticed that there had been an error in the article, can you correct it?
All published articles are first sent to the authors for final checks and proofreading during correction period and at the pre-publication stage. Special care should be taken to avoid all possible errors at these stages. The system closes each issue to corrections 5 days after publication, thus rendering corrections impossible. Furthermore, issues are sent to indices and scanned, so even if corrections were possible in the issues held by Beykent University, the scanned and indexed versions could still remain with errors. If it is noticed 5 days after publication that there had been a critical error in an article, authors can communicate the matter to the Editor's Office and an erratum can be introduced in the next issue. However, to avoid this, it is strictly advised that all checks be done thoroughly before publication.

19) I have reviewed an article, where can I see this?
Each issue includes a list of the persons who have reviewed all the articles accepted or rejected between the current issue and the previous one. Reviewers who cannot see their names or whose names have not been included in these lists for some reason can request a reviewer certificate. The certificates are sent to the requesting persons via e-mail after it is checked and confirmed on the DergiPark system that the relevant persons have actually reviewed papers.

20) I have received an invitation to review but I cannot see the manuscript when I click on the link.
Such errors may occur if the e-mail address you have received the invitation at is different from the e-mail address you have used to create your account on the DergiPark system, or if you are already logged in to another DergiPark account when you click on the invitation link. What you should do here is log out from the DergiPark account and log in again with the e-mail you have received the invitation at. If you do not have a DergiPark account associated with that e-mail address, you can request from the Editor's Office to reassign you as a reviewer with the e-mail address associated with your DergiPark account.

21) Can I turn a paper whose full text has been published in conference proceedings into a journal article?
Authors must certainly state it both at submission and on the title page if they are submitting papers which have been created from theses/dissertations or presented at a scientific conference, or whose abstract or extended summary has been published elsewhere before. The Journal cannot be held responsible for the lack of such statements. Furthermore, BUJSS does not accept the submission of articles adapted from papers presented anywhere before with their full texts published in any conference proceedings. Such submissions are rejected on the grounds that the similarity ratio in the plagiarism report will be too high even if the review process is completed.
If you have any further questions other than the ones above, please send an e-mail to sosyalbilimlerdergi@beykent.edu.tr.