CODE OF ETHICS
Yalvaç Academy Journal is a peer-reviewed journal published in accordance with the following ethical principles and rules in order to publish qualified scientific articles in the fields of Science and Social Sciences. Articles submitted to Yalvaç Academy Journal are evaluated by a double blind review process and published electronically with free access. The ethical responsibilities, roles and duties of the authors, journal editor, referees and publisher are listed below. The following ethical principles and rules have been prepared according to the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE (https://publicationethics.org/)). In addition, information about the situations accepted as plagiarism and unethical behaviours in Yalvaç Academy Journal is given.
Author(s)
Articles submitted to Yalvaç Academy Journal should be original studies in the fields of Science and Social Sciences.
All sources (authors, online pages, personal interviews, etc.) used in the articles should be cited correctly and appropriately.
It should be stated that the articles submitted to the journal have not been sent to another journal and the Copyright Transfer Form (http://www.tisej.com) should be filled in.
Persons who have not contributed to the article should not be listed as authors.
Conflicts of interest regarding the submitted manuscript should be indicated and the reason should be explained.
Authors may be asked to submit raw data about their work to the editorial board while the manuscript is in the refereeing process, in which case, the authors may be asked to submit the raw data to the editorial board.

Referees

All articles submitted to Yalvaç Academy Journal are evaluated through a double blind review process. Double blind reviewing means that the authors are kept confidential from the referees and the referees are kept confidential from the authors in order to ensure an unbiased, objective and independent evaluation process. Manuscripts are sent to the referees for evaluation through the journal management system. The referees are required to fill out a form containing the contribution of the article they evaluate to the fields of Science and Social Sciences and their decisions on whether the article is publishable or not and the reasons for these decisions. The ethical responsibilities and roles of the referees of Yalvaç Academy Journal are as follows:

Referees are only required to referee articles related to their areas of expertise.
Referees are expected to agree to referee articles that do not have conflicts of interest. Referees should inform the editor when they realise any conflict of interest and refuse to referee the relevant article.

Reviewers should evaluate the articles impartially and objectively.

Reviewers are required to fill in the Referee Evaluation Form for the manuscripts they evaluate, and are expected not to indicate their names on the forms in order not to damage the double blind review process. The referees are also required to state their decision on whether the manuscript is publishable or not and the reasons for their decision in this form.

The style used by reviewers in their proposals should be polite, respectful and scientific. Reviewers should avoid offensive, disrespectful and subjective personal comments. When reviewers are found to make such unscientific comments, they may be contacted by the editor or editorial board to review and correct their comments.
Reviewers are required to complete their evaluations within the time given to them and are expected to comply with the ethical responsibilities specified herein.
Editor

The editor is required to comply with the ethical responsibilities listed below in the ‘COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors’ (COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf)) and ‘COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors’ (COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (https://publicationethics.org/files/u2/Best_Practice.pdf)) published by the Committee on PublicationEthics (COPE (https://publicationethics.org/)).

The editor is responsible for all articles published in the journal. The ethical duties and responsibilities of the editor are as follows:

General Responsibilities

The editor is obliged to endeavour to improve the quality of the journal and to contribute to its development.
The editor should support the authors' freedom of expression.
Relations with Readers

The editor should ensure that the sections of the journal where peer review is not required (letters to the editor, invited papers, conference announcements, etc.) are clearly indicated.
The editor should endeavour to ensure that the articles published are compatible with the knowledge and skills of the readers of the journal.

Relations with Reviewers

The editor should ask the reviewers to evaluate the articles in accordance with their knowledge and expertise. Thus, it should be ensured that the articles are appropriately evaluated by experts in the field.
The editor is obliged to require the reviewers to state that they have no conflicts of interest regarding the article before evaluating an article.
The editor should communicate all necessary information about the peer review process and what is expected from the reviewers to the reviewers.
The editor should ensure that the peer review process is carried out in a double blind review process and should not disclose authors to reviewers and reviewers to authors.
The editor should evaluate reviewers based on their timeliness and performance.
The editor should create a database of reviewers and update the database according to the performance of the reviewers.
The editor should remove reviewers who make rude and unqualified comments or return late from the reviewer list.
The editor should constantly renew and expand the referee list according to the referees' areas of expertise.
Relationships with Authors

The editor should continuously update the publication and writing rules and the sample template to inform the authors about what is expected of them.
The editor should evaluate the manuscripts submitted to the journal in terms of the journal's editorial rules, the importance and originality of the work, and if he/she decides to reject the manuscript during the first submission process, he/she should clearly and impartially communicate the reasons to the authors. In this process, if it is decided that the article needs to be revised in terms of grammar, punctuation and/or spelling rules (margins, proper referencing, etc.), the authors should be informed about this and they should be given time to make the necessary corrections.

Manuscripts should include the dates of submission and acceptance for publication.
When authors request information about the status of their manuscripts, the authors should be informed about the status of their manuscripts in a way that does not disrupt the double blind review process.


Relations with the Editorial Board

The editor should communicate the publication and writing rules to the new editorial board members and explain what is expected of them.
The editor should communicate the most up-to-date version of the publication and writing rules to the members of the editorial board.
The editor should evaluate the members of the editorial board and select members who will actively participate in the development of the journal.
The editor should inform the members of the editorial board about their roles and responsibilities as follows

Publisher

Yalvaç Academy Journal is published by Yalvaç Vocational School of Technical Sciences. The ethical responsibilities of the publisher are as follows:

The publisher accepts that the decision-maker in the process of publishing an article in Yalvaç Academy Journal and the refereeing process is the responsibility of the editor.
The publisher provides open, electronic and free access to the journal on the journal's web page.


Plagiarism and Unethical Behaviour

All articles submitted to Yalvaç Academy Journal are scanned with IThenticate (http://www.ithenticate.com/) or Turnitin (https://www.turnitin.com/) software programme before being published. Articles with a similarity rate of 20% or less are accepted for publication. Articles exceeding this rate are examined in detail and, if deemed necessary, are sent back to the authors for revision or correction, and if plagiarism or unethical behaviour is detected, publication is rejected.

Some unethical behaviours are listed below:

Citing people as authors who have not contributed intellectually to the study.
Failure to acknowledge people who have contributed intellectually to the study as authors.
Failure to indicate if the article is derived from the author's master's/doctoral thesis or a project.
Slicing, i.e. publishing more than one article from a single study.
Failure to declare conflicts of interest regarding submitted manuscripts.
Deciphering the double blind review process.