ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR JOURNAL PUBLICATION

Turkish Journal of Kinesiology is committed to ensuring ethics in publication and quality of articles.
Especially, Turk J Kinesiol is following the Code of Conduct as defined by the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Good Publication Practice Guidelines as defined by the Annals of Internal Medicine. In addition, Turk J Kinesiol manages the publication process in accordance with TR Index Ethical Principles. Click the link to see the chart of TR Index Ethical Principles.

The ethics include the editor following certain rules on relations with readers, authors, and reviewers as well as procedures for handling complaints.

Conformance to standards of ethical behavior is expected of all parties involved: Authors, Editors, Reviewers, and the Publisher.

In particular,

Authors: Authors should present an objective discussion of the significance of the research work as well as sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the experiments. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Review articles should also be objective, comprehensive, and accurate accounts of the state of the art. The authors should ensure that their work is entirely original works, and if the work and/or words of others have been used, this has been appropriately acknowledged. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Authors should not submit articles describing essentially the same research to more than one journal. The corresponding author should ensure that there is a full consensus of all co-authors in approving the final version of the paper and its submission for publication.

Editors: Editors should evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit. They should encourage debate and academic integrity and also protect individual data. They also have a duty to act if any misconduct is suspected and to ensure the integrity of the academic record. The editors must not use unpublished information in the editor's own research without the express written consent of the author. They should take reasonable responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper.

Reviewers: Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them for improving the paper. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

PLEASE, CLICK to SEE the Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement.

Research Ethics (ETHICAL CONSENT FORM)
In the scope of the protection of human and animal rights, the Turk J Kinesiol adopts the exact convenience principle of national and international ethical rules and principles. In the articles evaluated in the Turkish Journal of Kinesiology, Research Ethics Committee Approval is needed for the following items:
• Research conducted in qualitative or quantitative approaches which require data collection from the participants using survey, interview, focus group study, observation, and/or experiment techniques,
• Using humans or animals (including material/data) with experimental or other scientific aims,
• Clinical research on humans,
• Research on animals,
• Retrospective studies in accordance with the law on the protection of personal data.

Peer Review Process
Turk J Kinesiol operates on a double-blind review process. Submissions to the journal will initially be evaluated by the Editorial Board. The topic of the manuscript must be appropriate for the scope of the journal. Manuscripts considered for publication must contain relevant and up-to-date data on theoretical or experimental research or on practical applications in the field of health and exercise.
During the preliminary assessment, the Editor may determine that the submission does not fall within the purview, aims, or scopes of the journal and may deny admittance to peer review.
All manuscripts deemed suitable and appropriate to the journal are sent to two (2) independent expert reviewers with hidden identities to assess the scientific quality of the paper. During the peer-review process, the editors declare, that none of the information about authors will be disclosed to reviewers, editorial board or publisher.

Following the evaluation of manuscripts, the editor sends the result of the review process to the author. The author is obliged to consider the comments and revise the manuscript based on the comments of the reviewers. Reviewers have the right to reject an article. Manuscripts, that are not applicable for publishing are rejected immediately. Manuscripts, that are meeting the requirements with minor issues are sent back to authors for correction. Manuscripts are accepted only after approving by both independent reviewers.

Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval and patient consents. In the case of a first decision of “revisions necessary “, authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.

The final decision about accepting or refusing the manuscript is strictly and fully in the competency of the editorial board. The editorial board is responsible for the scientific and ethical standards of the journal.
The evaluation process of a manuscript varies between 1-4 months. Depending on the reviewers accepting the evaluation and completing the evaluation process, the evaluation period may be extended. The Editors will endeavor to expedite manuscript handling if circumstances dictate.

Open Access Policy
All articles published in Turk J Kinesiol is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

Plagiarism Policy
Turk J Kinesiol Editorial Board recognizes that plagiarism is not acceptable and therefore establishes the following policy stating specific actions (penalties) when plagiarism is identified in an article that is submitted for publication in Turk J Kinesiol. We are using a similarity check program to submitted manuscripts.

Definition:
Plagiarism involves the "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work."

Policy:
Papers must be original, unpublished, and not pending publication elsewhere. Any material taken verbatim from another source needs to be clearly identified as different from the present original text by (1) indentation, (2) use of quotation marks, and (3) identification of the source.

Any text of an amount exceeding fair use standards (herein defined as more than two or three sentences or the equivalent thereof) or any graphic material reproduced from another source requires permission from the copyright holder and, if feasible, the original author(s) and also requires identification of the source; e.g., previous publication.
When plagiarism is identified, the Editor in Chief responsible for the review of this paper and will agree on measures according to the extent of plagiarism detected in the paper in agreement with the following guidelines:

Level of Plagiarism
Minor:
Short sections of other articles, other papers plagiarized and checked through software tools with a minimum plagiarism of 20%
Action: A warning is given to the authors and a request to change the text and properly cite the original article is made

Intermediate:
A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized without proper citation to the original paper
Action: The submitted article is rejected and the authors are forbidden to submit further articles for one year

Severe:
A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized that involves reproducing original results or ideas presented in another publication
Action: The paper is rejected, and the authors are forbidden to submit further articles for five years.

If a penalty is imposed for plagiarism, all authors will be subject to the same penalty. If the second case of plagiarism by the same author(s) is identified, a decision on the measures to be enforced will be made by the Editorial board (Editor-in-Chief, and Editorial members) with the Chair of the Editor in Chief. The author(s) might be forbidden to submit further articles forever.

This policy applies also to material reproduced from another publication by the same author(s). If an author uses text or figures that have previously been published, the corresponding paragraphs or figures should be identified, and the previous publication referenced. It is understood that in the case of a review paper or a paper of a tutorial nature much of the material was previously published.

The author should identify the source of the previously published material and obtain permission from the original author and the publisher. If an author submits a manuscript to Turk J Kinesiol with significant overlap with a manuscript submitted to another journal simultaneously, and this overlap is discovered during the review process or after the publications of both papers, the editor of the other journal is notified, and the case is treated as a severe plagiarism case. Significant overlap means the use of identical or almost identical figures and identical or slightly modified text for one-half or more of the paper. For self-plagiarism of less than one-half of the paper but more than one tenth of the paper, the case shall be treated as intermediate plagiarism. If self-plagiarism is confined to the methods section, the case shall be considered as minor plagiarism.

If an author uses some of his previously published material to clarify the presentation of new results, the previously published material shall be identified and the difference to the present publication shall be mentioned. Permission to republish must be obtained from the copyright holder. In the case of a manuscript that was originally published in conference proceedings and then is submitted for publication in Turk J Kinesiol either in identical or in expanded form, the authors must identify the name of the conference proceedings and the date of the publication and obtain permission to republish from the copyright holder. The editor may decide not to accept this paper for publication.

However, an author shall be permitted to use material from an unpublished presentation, including visual displays, in a subsequent journal publication. In the case of a publication being submitted, that was originally published in another language, the title, date, and journal of the original publication must be identified by the authors, and the copyright must be obtained. The editor may accept such a translated publication to bring it to the attention of a wider audience. The editor may select a specific paper that had been published for republication in order to provide a better perspective of a series of papers published in one issue of Turk J Kinesiol. This republication shall be clearly identified as such and the date and journal of the original publication shall be given, and the permission of the author(s) and the publisher shall be obtained.

The Turk J Kinesiol layout editor for the Journal is responsible for maintaining the list of authors subjected to penalties and will check that no authors of a submitted paper are on this list. If a banned author is identified, the layout editor will inform the Editor-in-Chief who will take appropriate measures. This policy will be posted on the website with the instructions for submitting a manuscript, and a copy will be sent to the authors with the confirmation email upon initial receipt of their original manuscript.

Retraction Policy

The papers published in the Turk J Kinesiol will be consider retracting in the publication if: 1) They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either because of misconduct (e.g., data fabrication) or honest error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error), 2) the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission, or justification (i.e., cases of redundant publication), 3) it constitutes plagiarism, 4) it reports unethical research
The mechanism of retraction follow the Retraction Guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) which can be accessed at https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing