ETHICAL PRINCIPLES

The guidelines prepared by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) are taken into consideration for the ethical principles of JOHTI. We recommend all our stakeholders to follow the COPE rules.

In the JOHTI, articles are evaluated with a double-blind peer-review system.

EDITORS DUTIES

The editor is independently responsible for which of the works submitted to the journal will be published. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding issues such as libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers (or society officers) in making these decisions.

Peer review

The editor shall ensure that the peer review process is fair, unbiased, and timely. Also editor shall review all disclosures of potential conflicts of interest and suggestions for self-citation made by reviewers in order to determine whether there is any potential for bias.

Fair play

The editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. When nominating potential editorial board members, the editor shall take account of the need for appropriate, inclusive, and diverse representation.

Confidentiality

The editor must protect the confidentiality of all material submitted to the journal and all communications with reviewers, unless otherwise agreed with the relevant authors and reviewers. In exceptional circumstances and in consultation with the publisher, the editor may share limited information with editors of other journals where deemed necessary to investigate suspected research misconduct.

Declaration of Competing Interests

The editor must not be involved in decisions about papers which s/he has written him/herself or have been written by family members or colleagues or which relate to products or services in which the editor has an interest. 

REVIEWERS DUTIES

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper. Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication, and lies at the heart of the scientific method.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not share the review or information about the paper with anyone or contact the authors directly without permission from the editor. Some editors encourage discussion with colleagues or co-reviewing exercises, but reviewers should first discuss this with the editor in order to ensure that confidentiality is observed and that participants receive suitable credit.

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

Alertness to Ethical Issues

A reviewer should be alert to potential ethical issues in the paper and should bring these to the attention of the editor, including any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which the reviewer has personal knowledge. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation.

Standards of Objectivity & Competing Interests

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Reviewers should be aware of any personal bias they may have and take this into account when reviewing a paper. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Reviewers should consult the Editor before agreeing to review a paper where they have potential conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

If a reviewer suggests that an author includes citations to the reviewer’s (or their associates’) work, this must be for genuine scientific reasons and not with the intention of increasing the reviewer’s citation count or enhancing the visibility of their work (or that of their associates).

DUTIES OF AUTHORS

Reporting Standards

Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour, and are unacceptable.

Review and professional publication articles should also be accurate and objective, and editorial ‘opinion’ works should be clearly identified as such.

Data Access and Retention

Authors may be asked to provide the research data supporting their paper for editorial review and/or to comply with the open data requirements of the journal. Authors should be prepared to provide public access to such data, if practicable, and should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable number of years after publication. Authors may refer to their journal’s Guide for Authors for further details.

Originality and Acknowledgement of Sources

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted and permission has been obtained where necessary.

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have influenced the reported work and that give the work appropriate context within the larger scholarly record. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source.

Plagiarism takes many forms, from ‘passing off’ another’s paper as the author’s own paper, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another’s paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical behaviour, and is unacceptable.

Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication

An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal of primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical behaviour, and is unacceptable.

In general, an author should not submit for consideration in another journal a paper that has been published previously, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint.

Confidentiality

Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.

Citation Manipulation

Citations and referencing are important when writing, any research, however, researchers should be mindful of the following behaviours:

- Authors should not indulge in excessive self-citations of their own previously published works. Included citations must be relevant, add value to the article, and should not be included just to increase the citation score of that author.

- During the peer-review process, you may be referred to papers the reviewer believes can further develop and improve your ideas. While there may be legitimate reasons to reference other publications, 'coercive citation' is unethical (this is where a reference is included as a condition of acceptance or without academic justification).

We are an advocate of both author freedom and editorial independence. If you feel you have been pressured to include a particular reference in your article, please contact us on editorjohti@gmail.com

- 'Citation pushing' is where an author includes superfluous or irrelevant references with the intention of boosting another specific individual’s citation score; this often occurs amongst groups of individuals who aim to boost each other’s citation scores. JOHTI takes this behaviour very seriously and will act in accordance with the journal guidelines, including escalation to the author’s institution as appropriate.

Authorship of the Paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made substantial contributions should be listed as co-authors.

Authorship issues vary, but include:

- Ghost authorship – exclusion of a contributor from the list of authors.

- Gift/guest authorship – Inclusion of someone who hasn’t contributed to the paper, or who has chosen not to be associated with the research.

- Disputes over the order of the authors and the level of contribution that each has made to the paper.

These issues can overshadow your work, and potentially lead to retractions, so it’s important to agree authorship prior to submitting your paper.

Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the paper (e.g. language editing or medical writing), they should be recognised in the acknowledgements section.

The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the last version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor consider (at their discretion) the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been submitted and the author must clearly flag any such request to the Editor. All authors must agree with any such addition, removal, or rearrangement.

Authors take collective responsibility for the work. Each individual author is accountable for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

 Defamation / Libel

You are required to obtain written proof of consent for studies about named organisations, or people before you submit your work.

If inaccurate, unsubstantiated or emotive statements are made about organisations, or people in a submission, we may ask you to change the text, or reject the work prior to publication.

Critiques and reviews of products and services are acceptable, but comments must be constructive and not malicious.

We advise all authors of case studies to inform the subject (person or organization) and to seek their consent. If we think the study is potentially libellous, or contains sensitive information, we will require written proof of consent before placing the paper in the production process.

Declaration of Competing Interests

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could be viewed as inappropriately influencing (bias) their work.
Possible conflicts of interest include:
- A prior relationship between author and editor.
- A financial or personal interest in the outcomes of the research.
- Undisclosed financial support for the research by an interested third party.
- A financial or personal interest in the suppression of the research.
- A pending patent.
All sources of financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article should be disclosed, as should the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, then this should be stated.
Notification of Fundamental Errors
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper if deemed necessary by the editor. If the editor or the publisher learn from a third party that a published work contains an error, it is the obligation of the author to cooperate with the editor, including providing evidence to the editor where requested.
Image Integrity
It is not acceptable to enhance, obscure, move, remove, or introduce a specific feature within an image. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. Manipulating images for improved clarity is accepted, but manipulation for other purposes could be seen as scientific ethical abuse and will be dealt with accordingly.
Authors should comply with any specific policy for graphical images applied by the relevant journal, e.g. providing the original images as supplementary material with the article or depositing these in a suitable repository. Authors may be asked to provide the research data supporting their paper for editorial review and/or to comply with the open data requirements of the journal. Authors should be prepared to provide public access to such data, if practicable, and should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable number of years after publication. Authors may refer to their journal’s Guide for Authors for further details.
ABOUT FEE
No fee is charged for the articles submitted to the journal.
PUBLICATION POLICIES – OPEN ACCESS
JOHTI recognizes the open publication policy. In this context, JOHTI complies with the "Budapest Declaration on Open Access". In addition, JOHTI accepted the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs: CC BY-NC-ND) before 01.09.2023 regarding the copyright of published articles. However, after 01.09.2023 JOHTI has approved the "Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International CC BY" license.  For more details: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This license entitles all parties to copy, share and redistribute all the articles, data sets, figures and supplementary files published in this journal in data mining, search engines, web sites, blogs, and other digital platforms under the condition of providing references. Free access is an approach that eases the interdisciplinary communication and encourages cooperation among different disciplines. JOHTI, therefore, contributes to its own field by providing more access to its articles and a more transparent review process.
ETHIC COMMITMENT APROVAL
Studies that require ethics committee approval;
-Research that requires data collection through methods such as scales, questionnaires, interviews, observations,
- Clinical researches on humans,
- Researches on animals,
It is necessary to comply with the copyright regulations for the intellectual and artistic works used.

PLAGIARISM DETECTION

A similarity report from plagiarism programs (ihenticate, turnitin or intihal.net) is requested from the authors. The rate of similarity of the submitted articles with the program is checked by the editors. Each similarity rate should not exceed 2% and the total similarity rate should not exceed 20%. The editor does not only consider these ratios, but also evaluates them qualitatively.

There are various forms plagiarism can take.
- Verbatim copying
- Paraphrasing
- Re-using parts of a work without attribution
- Self-plagiarism or text recycling

COPYRIGHT
Copyright is a type of intellectual property which protects certain sorts of original creative work, including academic articles. Copyright allows the creator of a work to decide whether, and under what conditions, their work may be used, published, and distributed by others. As such, it governs how others can use, publish, and distribute articles.
All manuscripts submitted to JOHTI are copyrighted by the author and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International CC BY.
JOHTI does not pay royalties for any article. Authors are free to use their articles under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.

REPOSITORY/ARCHIVING POLICY
JOHTI articles and processes are archived in the Dergipark database. Degipark uses the LOCKSS system. This system has permission to collect, preserve and present the Archival Unit. To access JOHTI's archive, click on https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/johti/lockss-manifest.
In additionally, the published articles are available in full text on CABI and Index Copernicus.
ARTICLE SHARING
Preprint and Published Version
Authors can share their preprint and published version anywhere at any time.
If accepted for publication, we encourage authors to link from the preprint/published to their formal publication via its Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Researchers have access to the formal publications on Dergipark, and so links will help your users to find, access, cite, and use the best available version.
The published source must be acknowledged. For articles, a link to the journal home page or articles' DOI must be set. For chapters, a link to the volume’s dedicated book page must be set. 

Ethics committee approval must be obtained separately for studies conducted in all branches of science and for clinical and experimental studies on humans and animals that require an ethics committee decision. It should be clearly written and documented in the article. The "Ethics Declaration Form" in the sample file should be filled. 

Articles should include a statement about compliance with Research and Publication Ethics.

                                                                                                  *The above principles have been prepared using COPE, Emerald and Elsevier Policies.