Tourism Academic Journal invites the authors to fulfill the following ethical conditions by believing in the contribution of developing a consistent and reputable information network. The journal pays attention to the instruction of the Higher Education Association Scientific Research and Publication Ethic, the suggestions of the  International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the international standards for the authors and the reviewers that are suggested by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) . The job descriptions for the editors, the authors, and the reviewers have been prepared by following COPE (Code of Conduct for Journal Editors) and Elsevier Guidelines for Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.

Duties of Editors

Publication Decisions

The Editor in Chief is responsible for the manuscripts to decide which one(s) will be published. Validation and importance for the researchers and audience of the manuscript are sources for the decision. The Editor in Chief may discuss with the other editors or reviewer before making a decision. 

Peer Review

The Editor in Chief makes the evaluation process fair, objective, and on time. The research articles are reviewed by min. two independent reviewers from outside of the journal. The Editor in Chief may ask additional opinions if necessary. The Editor in Chief selects the experts in the field and avoids of selection of fraudulent and prejudicial reviewers.

Fair Play

The Editor in Chief evaluate the submissions in terms of intelletual content and regardless of author(s)’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religious, ethnicity, citizenship or political view.

Confidentiality

Editor in Chief protects the confidentiality of the materials and the communications with the reviewers unless indicated otherwise. The Editor in Chief keeps the identity of the reviewers unless the reviewers accept to reveal their identity. The materials published in the research articles cannot be used by Editor in Chief without the auhtor(s)’ written permission. The information and opinions obtain during the review process keep in secret and are not used for personal advantage.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Editor in Chief must avoid to evaluate the submissions that contain conflicts from personal relationships. 

The Responsibilities of Reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer-review helps the Editor in Chief to make editorial decisions and may help the author(s) to improve the paper via editorial communications. Peer-review is placed in the center of the scientific management. The reviewers are asked to treat the author(s) and their papers as they want to be treated and to behave decorous. The reviewer who thinks him or herself is not qualified enough to review the submission or not possible to review it on time, has to inform the Editor in Chief and decline to be involved the review process. 

Confidentiality.

The all documents to be reviewed should be considered as top secret. The reviewers should not share the submission and the review with other people without the Editor in Chief’s permission or not communicate with the author(s) directly. The information and opinions obtain during the review process keep in secret and are not used for personal advantage.

Alertness to Ethical Issues.

The reviewer must be awake for the possible ethical issues and inform the Editor in Chief the mportant similarities with other research articles.

Standards of Objectivity
The reviews must be performed fair-and-square. The reviewers provide their opinions with supportive arguments.

Duties of Authors

Reporting Standards

The author(s) must provide a correct explanation of the study as well as an objective discussion of the importance. The data should be presented correctly. Fraudulent and intentional misrepresentations are unethical behaviors and are not acceptable. 

Data Access and Retention.
The author(s) may be asked to provide the research data an / or obey the journal’s open data neccessities. They must be ready to provide the data for public access and be prepared to keep the data for acceptable duration after the publication.

Originality and Acknowledgement of Sources
The author(s) must be sure that they submit original papers and cite properly for other researchers’ studies or get necessary permissions. The author(s) must avoid from every types of plagiarism. 

Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication.

Submitting the paper to different journals at the same time is an unethical behavior and is not acceptable. Generally, the author(s) should not submit a study that was published elsewhere except for an abstract of a course or dissertation to another journal.

Authorship of the Paper

The authorship must be limited with the people who contributed to the concept, design, perform or explication of the study. Everyone who significantly contributed to the study must be listed as co-authors. The authors take the collective responsibility of the study. Each author is responsible to research and resolve of the all questions related to a part or whole of the study.

Declaration of Competing Interests

The role of all the financial sources and the supporter if exists in the study must be explained. Also, potential conflicts must be revealed as soon as possible.

Notification of Fundamental Errors

When the author finds an important mistake on the published paper, he/she immediately should inform the Editor in Chief or the publisher. It is the author’s responsibility to collaborate with the Editor in Chief to withdraw or revise the paper based on the Editor in Chief’s decision

Changes to Authorship

It is not acceptable to make change on the authorship list unless providing a clear explanation to the Editor in Chief. If any change is necessary, a clear explanation and written approval must be provided to the Editor in Chief.

Finally, Tourism Academic Journal wants to particularly remind the following issues to the author(s):

• Plagiarism, slicing, dublication, fabrication, ignoring the supports are among the unacceptable practices within the ethical framework. All the authors must be sensitive about these issues.
• The study should not be under review process of another journal.
• The study should not be published in elsewhere.
• The authors must avoid conflicts of interest among themselves.
• The submission should not contain information about the author(s).
• Tourism Academic Journal applies blind-review process. The authors must respect the confidentiality of the review process and must not reveal themselves to the reviewers.
• The responsibility of all the materials that are in the submission belongs to the authors.

ETHICS COMMITTEE APPROVAL

Studies that require the approval of the Ethics Committee are as follows.

• All kinds of research conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that require data collection from the participants by using survey, interview, focus group work, observation, experiment, interview techniques,

• The use of humans and animals (including material/data) for experimental or other scientific purposes,

• Clinical studies on humans,

• Research on animals,

• Retrospective studies in accordance with the law on the protection of personal data,

Moreover;

• In case reports, it should be stated that an “informed consent form” was obtained,

• Obtaining and specifying permission from the owners for the use of scales, questionnaires, photographs belonging to others,

• Indication of compliance with copyright regulations for the intellectual and artistic works used,

• Retrospective ethics committee approval is not required for articles whose research data were analyzed before 2020, produced from postgraduate/doctoral studies (must be specified in the article), submitted an application for publication to the journal in the previous year, accepted but not yet published.

• Whether ethics committee permission and/or legal/special permission is required for articles to be published in journals should be stated in the article. If it is necessary to obtain these permissions, it should be clearly presented from which institution, on what date and with what decision or number number.

Publication Policy
1. Tourism Academic Journal is a peer-reviewed journal and published one time in six months.This journal uses double-blind review.
2. The manuscripts submitted to the Tourism Academic Journal should not be published or submitted to elsewhere.
3. The manuscripts that are sent to the Tourism Academic Journal are subject to editorial checks in terms of form and content. They are sent to the reviewers, if appropriate.
4. The journal is tourism-focused and interdisciplinary. The main purpose of the journal is to publish papers that contribute to the tourism discipline theoretically and practically, were prepared within the framework of the neutrality principle, depend on science ethics and are solution-oriented.
5. The duration of a manuscript reviewing is 45 days on average.
The requested revisions must be performed based on the following instructions:
• Two separate files for the revisions must be prepared for manuscript and revision form. Both files should not contain author(s)’ information.
• The files must be named as “manuscript” and “revision form”.
• It should be explained how the revisions were performed on the form. The requested revision that is not possible to be applied should be explained in a valid and appropriate way.
•  Page, paragraph, and line numbers of the revisions must be provided on the form.
•  Revised parts must be written in red color on the text.
6. The authors must communicate with the Editor in Chief when they find a mistake. They should collaborate for revision or withdraw of the manuscript.