Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

Kemal Tahir Çalışmaları adopts a publication policy committed to ethical values in the production, sharing and preservation of scholarly knowledge. The journal is aligned with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the directive of the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) of Türkiye on Scientific Research and Publication Ethics, and expects the full discharge of ethical responsibilities from all stakeholders, including authors, reviewers, editors and the editorial board. The principles below give concrete form to this framework.

1. Responsibilities of Authors

• Authors must submit only original work that makes a scholarly contribution and has not been previously published; submitted work may not be under concurrent consideration at another journal.
• The work is submitted with the written consent of all authors; following submission, the addition or removal of authors and changes to the order of authors are permitted only with the written consent of all authors. Gift authorship and ghost authorship are not accepted.
• The revised version of work previously presented at an academic meeting may be considered, provided this is clearly disclosed.
• An ORCID identifier is required for all authors. The author contribution statement is provided within the manuscript in accordance with the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) classification.
• Any funding support, conflict of interest and use of generative AI tools are disclosed clearly at submission (see § 5 and § 6).
• For empirical research involving human participants or animals, ethics committee approval from the relevant institution must have been obtained; the approval document (committee, date, number) is uploaded as an attachment at submission.
• Data fabrication, manipulation and selective reporting are not accepted; data used must be properly sourced.
• Liability, both legal and scholarly, for the views and findings expressed in the work rests with the author(s).

2. Responsibilities of Reviewers

• Scholars invited to review decline submissions that are outside their area of expertise or in which they have a conflict of interest and inform the editor accordingly. Conflict of interest covers shared institutional affiliation, a shared publication record, professional competition, family ties and similar relationships.
• Reviewers keep confidential any information acquired during the review; they do not share the submission with third parties, do not use it in scholarly debate and do not cite it until publication.
• Evaluations rest on concrete scholarly criteria rather than personal opinion: originality; theoretical and methodological soundness; use of sources; coherence of argument; contribution to the field. Constructive feedback is expected; dismissive, disrespectful or insufficiently substantiated statements are not accepted.
• Review reports are delivered within the time foreseen; if delay arises, the reviewer contacts the editor.
• Reviewers may not upload the submission to any artificial intelligence tool and may not produce their report with artificial intelligence (see § 6).
• Reviewers who detect suspected ethical violations during the review (plagiarism, data manipulation, duplicate publication and so on) report this to the editor immediately.

3. Responsibilities of Editors

• Editors of Kemal Tahir Çalışmaları conduct the publication process under the principles of independence, impartiality and public benefit. Editorial decisions are made independently of the publisher, external institutions and financial relationships.
• Submissions are evaluated for their conformity to the journal’s scope and publication policy, their scholarly quality, methodological reliability and ethical standards.
• The double-blind peer review process is conducted with care; the identities of authors and reviewers are not revealed to one another at any stage of the process. Reviewer selection is based on subject expertise.
• An editor withdraws from the review of any submission in which they are an author, in which they have an advisory relationship or in which they otherwise have a conflict of interest; the process is delegated to another editor.
• Editors do not breach the confidentiality of a submission; do not share the manuscript with third parties; do not cite it in scholarly debate.
• Editors oversee checks for plagiarism, ethical violations and missing documents; where necessary, they request correction, supporting documents or issue a rejection.
• Decisions on retraction, correction and expressions of concern are taken jointly by the editor and the editorial board in line with the principles set out in § 8.

4. Responsibilities of the Editorial Board

• The Editorial Board sets, develops and applies the journal’s general publication policies. Decisions are made independently of the publisher and external pressure.
• The Editorial Board bears responsibility for preserving the journal’s scholarly quality, encouraging original contributions, upholding ethical standards and ensuring the proper operation of copyright and intellectual property processes.
• The Editorial Board has the ultimate authority of inquiry and decision regarding suspected ethical violations; the relevant COPE flowcharts are consulted as needed.

5. Conflict of Interest

• Authors, reviewers and editors openly declare, at the submission or review stage, any relationship that may affect the evaluation process, including financial support, employment relationships, consultancies, shared publications, family ties and professional competition.
• Authors state any conflict of interest under a “Conflict of Interest Statement” heading in the manuscript. In the absence of a conflict of interest this is also stated explicitly.
• Reviewers with a conflict of interest decline the review; editors with a conflict of interest withdraw from the process.
• An additional policy applies to submissions authored by editorial team members; see Policy on Publication by Editorial Team Members.

6. Policy on the Use of Generative AI

Authorship attribution. Artificial intelligence tools (large language models, generative AI applications and the like) may not be listed as authors. Authorship requires accountability and intellectual responsibility; AI tools cannot assume that responsibility.

Author declaration. Where AI tools are used in the preparation of a work in any form (text generation, source summarisation, language editing, code generation, data analysis and similar tasks), the name and version of the tool used and the scope of its use are disclosed explicitly in a separate section of the manuscript. Tools used solely for grammar checking or text formatting are exempt from this declaration.

Obligations of reviewers and editors. Reviewers and editors may not upload submitted manuscripts to any AI tool or cloud-based language model. This restriction is necessary to protect the confidentiality of submissions and intellectual property.

Liability. Authors bear sole responsibility for the accuracy, originality and ethical conformity of any content produced by an AI tool they have used. Violations arising from fabricated references, incorrect information or content derived from another are attributed directly to the author.

7. Plagiarism Screening

• All submissions are screened for plagiarism with Crossref Similarity Check (iThenticate) at the preliminary review stage.
• Similarity reports are not assessed by total ratio alone; the distribution of source-based matches, quotation handling and citation quality are also examined. A high level of match with a single source may itself be grounds for rejection.
• The acceptable total similarity ratio, excluding the reference list and direct quotations, is below 20%.
• Work in which plagiarism, data fabrication, ghost authorship or concealment of conflict of interest is detected after publication is retracted and the relevant person and institution are notified (see § 8 and § 9).

8. Retraction, Correction and Expression of Concern

Kemal Tahir Çalışmaları conducts post-publication processes in accordance with the COPE Retraction Guidelines.

Retraction. Work in which a serious ethical violation is detected (plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, ghost authorship and the like) is retracted from all versions of the journal. The retraction notice is permanently appended to the article’s metadata; the text remains accessible via DOI but is marked “RETRACTED”.

Correction (Erratum). Where minor errors that do not affect content (such as typographical mistakes, citations or tabular data) are detected, a correction notice is published.

Expression of Concern. In cases where serious doubt has arisen about the integrity of the work but no definitive decision has yet been reached, an Expression of Concern is published. Once the inquiry is completed the work is either retracted or the Expression of Concern is lifted.

9. Reporting and Complaints Procedure

• Where a violation of scholarly ethics is detected (plagiarism, undue authorship, conflict of interest, missing ethics committee documentation and the like), the relevant individual or institution may contact the editorial office ([editor email address]).
• When a report is received the inquiry is conducted in line with the relevant COPE flowcharts. The process consists of preliminary review, consultation with the parties concerned, recourse to expert opinion where appropriate and a final decision.
• The anonymity of the reporting individual is protected upon request. Where a report is found to be unfounded or malicious, the journal may take further action concerning the reporter.
• The complaint inquiry is completed within a reasonable time; the outcome is communicated in writing to both the reporter and the party investigated. Where an ethical violation is confirmed, sanctions may include retraction, correction, notification to the author’s institution and, where appropriate, a temporary submission ban.

10. Open Access, Copyright and License

Kemal Tahir Çalışmaları pursues a non-commercial open access policy. All published work is made available without any restriction or delay through the journal website in full text. No article processing charge, submission fee or review fee is collected from authors; no royalty is paid to the author.

All work published in the journal is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

For the full framework see: Open Access Policy, Copyright Notice, Pricing Policy.