Ethical Principles

Mugla Journal of Science and Technology (MJST) evaluates and publishes original research on all aspects of basic science, engineering and technology in accordance with the ethical duties and responsibilities determined according to the guide and policies of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All papers submitted to MJST are evaluated through single-blind peer review process and the papers accepted are published electronically with free access. The ethical responsibilities and duties of publisher, editors, reviewers and authors are as follows:

Publisher

- MJST is published by Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences and the publisher provides open and free access to the papers published in the journal on its website.
- The publisher acknowledges that the editors are responsible for all processes of the manuscripts submitted to MJST.
- The publisher protects the copyright of the authors of the papers published in MJST and archives the papers on its website.

Editors

- The editor of the journal is solely and independently responsible for deciding publishing conditions of the submitted manuscript. The validation, importance and novelty of the manuscript must always be considered before reaching the final decision.
- The editor and sector editors may follow the principles of the journal's editorial board and bound by necessary issues like libel, copyright violation and plagiarism. The editor may also collaborate with sector editors or reviewers for reaching out the final decision.
- The editor and the sector editors should accommodate fair, equitable and timely peer review process via reviewers who are experts in the relevant field. Unless needed any additional reviewer, at least two external and independent reviewers shall be selected by the editor or by the sector editor.
- The manuscripts should be evaluated based on their contents and novelties by the editor or by the sector editor without taken into account the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
- The editorial policies of the journal should be transparent and contain honest reporting in which, the peer reviewers and authors have a significant opinion about the expectations of the journal. Also, the editor and the sector editors should mainly use the journal’s standard electronic submission system for all journal communications unless any technical issues prevent the usage of it.
- The editor shall create a transparent mechanism for appeal against editorial decisions.
- The editor must not attempt to affect the journal’s ranking and should not convince authors to add the editor’s or the sector editor’s own articles unless there are logical scientific reasons to support this addition.
- The confidentiality of all the manuscripts submitted to the journal must be preserved by the editor and by the sector editor. Also all communications with relevant parties must be protected by the editor and by the sector editor. The reviewer’s identities must also be protected by the editor or by the sector editor, since the journal is not subjected to an open peer-review system
- Unpublished materials, information or ideas of a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's or sector editor’s own research without the expression written consent of the author.
- The publisher should be notified with any potential editorial conflicts of interest and these conflicts of interests then should be updated if it is necessary. The publisher may publish such declarations in the journal.
- The editor or the sector editor must not make any decision about manuscripts that have been written by him, family member or colleagues. This kind of submission must be subject to all of the journal’s usual procedures and this process must be carried out without inclusion of the relevant author/editor and their research groups.
- The editor should armor the integrity of the published record by examining suspected misconduct.
- If it is needed, the editor should contact the author of the manuscript and inform him/her about the respective claims, but may also communicate with the relevant institutions and research centers. The editor shall utilize the publisher’s systems for the detection of misconduct, like plagiarism.
- In case of plagiarism, the editor should act with the publisher and publish a prompt publication of a correction, retraction or expression of concern.

Reviewers

- The importance of peer review is undeniable since this process allows the author to improve his/her paper and the editor making the final decision. During the peer review process, reviewers are expected to pay attention above mentioned ethical situations and handle the manuscript objectively.
- If the subject of the manuscript is not relevant to reviewer’s expertise or in case of any unavailability to evaluate the manuscript timely, the reviewer is expected to decline the evaluation process and inform the editor immediately.
- All manuscripts submitted to Mugla Journal of Science and Technology (MJST) are confidential. Reviewers are also responsible to keep the manuscripts confidential by not sharing any review or information about the paper with anyone. Also reviewers must not contact the authors without getting any permission from the editor.
- The information or ideas that are presented in the peer reviewed manuscript must not be used for personal advantage.
- The reviewer should be very careful about the ethical issues like plagiarism. In that case, the reviewer should immediately alert the editor.
- Reviews should be objective and supported with arguments without including any personal criticism of author.
- In case of any potential conflict of interests, the reviewer must alert the editor or the section editor and must decline the evaluation of the paper.
- The suggestion of a reviewer about inclusion of reviewers’ (or their associates’) work must be scientifically reasonable without any intention of increasing reviewer’s citation count.

Authors

- Authors submitting a research article or a short communication, should provide appropriate and original results and discussions about its significance. A review and other types of article should also be concrete and not subjective.
- A paper should be written in sufficient detail with inclusion of adequate references. Proper citations of other publications must be done and necessary acknowledgement should be made in the reported work.
- All the funding sources must be mentioned in the acknowledgement part of the manuscript.
- Unethical issues like plagiarism and deliberative inaccurate statements are not acceptable. All articles submitted to the journal are checked for plagiarism with the IThenticate program. The acceptable limit for overall similarity is 30% and for similarity from a single source is 7%. If the similarity levels exceed these limits, the manuscript is returned to the author.
- An author should not submit the same manuscript partially (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint) or completely to more than one journal. This kind of behavior is unethical and is not accepted by the journal.
- In order to become a co-author, significant contributions in the areas of concept, design and execution of the concern manuscript should be made. The language editors or medical writers should be mentioned in the acknowledgements section.
- The corresponding author should decide about appropriate and inappropriate co-authors and must get the approvals from all co-authors about the final version of manuscript and submission of it to a significant journal.
- All authors are responsible from all part of the manuscript.
- If the manuscript includes the use of animal or human subjects, necessary documents like approval of appropriate institutional committee(s) and a statement about it should be provided by the author.
- All the significant errors of the manuscript noticed by the author must be reported to the editor immediately. In case of any corrections, the author is obliged to provide evidences requested by the editor or the sector editor.
- Drastic changes like enhancement, movement, removal or introduction of a feature is not acceptable for the images. These kinds of changes are accepted as unethical and necessary precautions will be taken

Publication Policy

- MJST is published two times (June and December) a year. The journal is an open access journal and it is completely free of charge.
- MJST accepts original research on all aspects of basic science, engineering and technology. Original research results, scientific reviews, short communications and technical notes in various fields of science and technology are considered for publication. The publication language of the journal is English; however, English and Turkish abstracts are mandatory if accepted.
- Every author of the submitted manuscript share the ethical responsibilities that fit publication ethics equally. iThenticate program ® ( Professional Plagiarism Prevention) is used to detect the similarity rate of the submitted manuscript. In order to evaluate the submitted manuscript, the manuscript must have similarity rate less than 30%. Manuscripts that have more than 30% similarity are rejected. These articles can then be revised by the authors and can be resubmitted as a new manuscript.
- After their manuscripts are accepted, the authors must send the copyright transfer form in PDF format. This form should be signed by all the authors and then uploaded on the MJST on-line system.
- At least two reviewers are selected for the evaluation of the submitted manuscript based on their professionals. The number of referees may be more than two for some articles. The reviewers should complete the evaluation procedure in 21 days after they accept to review the manuscript.

- Our journal allows posting on preprint servers such as ChemRxiv, bioRxiv, arXiv prior to publication.

Article withdrawal

- For the article withdrawal requests, a letter including the reasons for withdrawal should be sent.
- The final decision is made by the Editor Board.
- If the withdrawal request is approved for a published article, the article content is replaced with a HTML page stating that the article has been withdrawn.
- The withdrawal notice is sent to the affiliated institutions of the author and to the organizations in which the journal is indexed for both published and unpublished manuscripts.