Ethics and Policies

PEER REVIEW AND PUBLICATION

The manuscript evaluation and publication process of Golden Light Publishing® journals are as follows:

Pre-processing. All submissions will be initially assessed by the editor or an external expert assigned by the editor for suitability to the journal. The topic considered, format, and language of the submission are examined in terms of technical requirements and the journal's scope. For manuscripts that do not meet the requirements, the Editor requests revision from the authors. If the authors do not respond to the revision request within the time allowed, the article is deemed to have been withdrawn.

Referee evaluation. A double-blind peer-review system is used in the manuscript evaluation process, in which two external independent referees are assigned to the submission by the editor. The editor may appoint a third (or more) reviewer when deemed necessary.

The result of the evaluation can be rejection, revision, or acceptance. If the manuscript is rejected in line with the majority of the referee's opinions, the process is terminated and the manuscript is rejected. If corrections are necessary or there are some points to be highlighted/clarified, the author is requested to revise the manuscript within a reasonable time upon the workload of the revision request in line with the referees' comments. If the article has been accepted by all referees, the editing stage is started. It is noted that the editor is responsible for the final decision regarding accepting or rejecting submissions.

Article editing and proofreading.  After acceptance, the manuscript will be sent to production for editing. When editing is completed, the corresponding author will receive the uncorrected proof of the manuscript for proofreading. The purpose of proofreading is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables, and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title, and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the editor. Authors who do not respond within the time allowed are considered to have withdrawn their submissions. When the proofreading is ready for the author's check, the corresponding author is also requested to provide a written statement declaring permission for the manuscript to be published in the journal on behalf of all authors.

Publication.  Volume, issue, and page numbers are assigned to the article and published online. After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

ORCiD

Before publication, ORCiDs must be provided for all authors. If you already have an ORCiD, you will be asked to provide it. The ORCiD is not required for submission or peer review, but your article will not be able to be published online until ORCiDs are provided.

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

All Golden Light Publishing® journals are published open access. This means publishing articles in Golden Light Publishing® journals does not require the transfer of copyright as authors retain the copyright of their manuscripts. All open-access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations. The submitting author is responsible for securing any permissions needed for the reuse of ... Show all

PEER REVIEW AND PUBLICATION

The manuscript evaluation and publication process of Golden Light Publishing® journals are as follows:

Pre-processing. All submissions will be initially assessed by the editor or an external expert assigned by the editor for suitability to the journal. The topic considered, format, and language of the submission are examined in terms of technical requirements and the journal's scope. For manuscripts that do not meet the requirements, the Editor requests revision from the authors. If the authors do not respond to the revision request within the time allowed, the article is deemed to have been withdrawn.

Referee evaluation. A double-blind peer-review system is used in the manuscript evaluation process, in which two external independent referees are assigned to the submission by the editor. The editor may appoint a third (or more) reviewer when deemed necessary.

The result of the evaluation can be rejection, revision, or acceptance. If the manuscript is rejected in line with the majority of the referee's opinions, the process is terminated and the manuscript is rejected. If corrections are necessary or there are some points to be highlighted/clarified, the author is requested to revise the manuscript within a reasonable time upon the workload of the revision request in line with the referees' comments. If the article has been accepted by all referees, the editing stage is started. It is noted that the editor is responsible for the final decision regarding accepting or rejecting submissions.

Article editing and proofreading.  After acceptance, the manuscript will be sent to production for editing. When editing is completed, the corresponding author will receive the uncorrected proof of the manuscript for proofreading. The purpose of proofreading is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables, and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title, and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the editor. Authors who do not respond within the time allowed are considered to have withdrawn their submissions. When the proofreading is ready for the author's check, the corresponding author is also requested to provide a written statement declaring permission for the manuscript to be published in the journal on behalf of all authors.

Publication.  Volume, issue, and page numbers are assigned to the article and published online. After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

ORCiD

Before publication, ORCiDs must be provided for all authors. If you already have an ORCiD, you will be asked to provide it. The ORCiD is not required for submission or peer review, but your article will not be able to be published online until ORCiDs are provided.

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

All Golden Light Publishing® journals are published open access. This means publishing articles in Golden Light Publishing® journals does not require the transfer of copyright as authors retain the copyright of their manuscripts. All open-access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations. The submitting author is responsible for securing any permissions needed for the reuse of copyrighted materials included in the manuscript.

While the advice and information in the journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.

ETHICS & RESPONSIBILTY

Publication ethics are kept during publication processes in all Golden Light Publishing® journals to assure the best practice guidelines and hence the publisher, the editor, authors, and peer reviewers must abide by the ethical policies.

Golden Light Publishing® journals conform to the principles below that are described by COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and not only transparency principles, but also best practices in scholarly publishing pointed out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Publisher

Golden Light Publishing® is committed to:

• maintaining the editorial independence of  journal editors
• supporting journal editors to run their journals ethically and transparently
• maintaining an accurate and transparent academic record, including publishing corrections and retractions when necessary

Author(s)

Authorship of the paper. Authorship should be narrowed to those who have made a vital contribution to the reported study including conception, execution, design, and interpretation. All authors who made significant contributions to the submitted manuscript should be listed as co-authors.

Originality and plagiarism. The authors are responsible for the content, language, and originality of the manuscript they submitted. The authors should ensure that they have composed their original works entirely, and if the authors have used the study and/or words of other authors, that this has been conveniently cited or quoted. Plagiarism takes many forms varying from “passing off” someone´s paper as the author's paper to copying or paraphrasing important parts of someone´s paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research performed by others. Plagiarism in all its forms comprises unethical publishing behavior and is inadmissible. Before submitting a manuscript, it is strongly recommended to check in terms of similarity by iThenticate or another tool to explore plagiarism.

Acknowledgement of funding sources. All funding sources for the research reported should be acknowledged thoroughly at the end of the manuscript (as a separate section of "Funding") before references.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest. All authors should reveal in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest which may be construed to affect the findings or interpretation of their manuscript. All financial support sources for the project should be disclosed as well. Disclosed examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be declared at the earliest stage possible, preferably within the manuscript text as a separate section of "Conflicts of interest" when submitting.

Reporting standards. The authors of the manuscript should present an accurate explanation of the study conducted and an objective discussion of its importance. Underlying data should be accurately given in the manuscript. A paper should include sufficient details and references to allow other researchers to repeat the study. Tricky or knowingly imprecise statements form unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Reviews and research articles should also be precise, original, and objective and editorial opinion works should be described overtly as such.

Data access & retention. Authors might be asked to ensure the raw data in connection with a paper for the editorial review process, and should in any event be prepared to keep such data for a moderate time after publication.

Multiple, redundant, or concurrent publication. Submitted manuscripts must not be under consideration by any other journal. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently comprises unethical publishing behavior. The authors must also ensure that the article has not been published elsewhere before.

Principal errors in published studies. When an author corresponds to a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her published work, he/she must notify swiftly the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to withdraw or correct the paper.

Reviewers

Reviewers should evaluate the manuscript assigned to them and send their comments in the due time. If the manuscript is not in the reviewer’s field of interest, then the manuscript must be sent back to the editor so that the other reviewers can be assigned without loss of time.

Contribution. Reviewers are the main members contributing to the quality of the journal being peer-reviewed. The reviewers who feel unqualified to review the received manuscript must swiftly notify the editor and reject to review that manuscript.

Confidentiality. Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

Objectivity standards. Reviews should be objectively performed. Personal criticism of the author is unsuitable. Reviewers should frankly express their aspects with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of sources. Reviewers should describe the relevant existing study which has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also point out to the editor’s attention any vital resemblance or coincidence between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal information.

Disclosure & conflicts of interest. Reviewers should not take into account the manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest derived from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions linked to the manuscripts. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be utilized in any reviewers’ studies without expressing the written permission of the author. Exclusive information or opinions attained from the peer-review process must be maintained confidential and not used for personal benefit. Reviewers ought not to take into account manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest deriving from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions linked to the articles.

Editor

Objectivity. The Editor accounts for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal ought to be published. In this process, the authors of the manuscript are not distinguished based on his/her race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and citizenship by the editors. Editor's decision to accept, revise, or reject a manuscript for publication should be based merely on the importance, originality, and clarity of the manuscript, and also the convenience of the study performed in the manuscript to the coverage of the journal.

Confidentiality. The Editor must not reveal any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone but the corresponding author, reviewers/potential reviewers, and the publishing personnel. The Editor will ensure that all material submitted by authors remains confidential during the review process.

Conflicts of interest & Disclosure. The Editor should avoid making decisions on manuscripts submitted from their institution, or by research collaborators, co-authors, or competitors. To avoid the possibility of bias, editors should recuse themselves if they have published with, collaborated with, or have been in a mentoring relationship with any author or contributor of the manuscript within the past three years.

The most apparent type of conflict of financial interest occurs when an editor or affiliated organization may benefit financially from a decision to publish or reject a manuscript. Financial conflicts may include salary, grants from a company with an interest in the results, honoraria, stock or equity interests in a company whose product is discussed in the article, and intellectual property rights (patents, royalties, and copyrights).

Other nonfinancial conflicts of interest should also be avoided or disclosed. Editorial decisions should be based on an objective and impartial consideration of the facts, exclusive of personal or professional bias. All decisions by editors should be based solely on the paper’s scientific merit, originality, and quality of writing as well as on the relevance to the journal’s scope and mission, without regard to race, ethnic origin, sex, religion, or citizenship of the authors. The Editor must disclose personal biases that may affect their editorial decisions.

Peer review process. The editor must ensure that a double-blind peer review process is effectively performed for each manuscript submitted to the journal system.

Management of unethical behavior(s). The editors and the publisher(s) should take rationally responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented regarding a submitted manuscript or published article.

Editorial Board Members

Everyone including the Editorial Board is committed to:

• promoting fairness and equality and opposing any form of discrimination
• promoting the transparency of and respect for the academic record
• respecting the confidentiality of others
• being transparent about real or apparent competing interests

Ethics Committee Approval Information

Ethics Committee Approval information (the title of the ethics committee, date, and number) must be stated in the method section and on the articles' first/last page. In this regard, the following studies to be sent to our journal to be reviewed for publication must follow research and publication ethics as well as they must include Ethics Committee Approval information:

1. All qualitative or quantitative studies which included data collection from participants by questionnaire, interview, focus group study, observation, and experiment;
2. All studies in which humans or animals (materials/data included) are used for experimental or any other scientific purposes;
3. Clinical trials with humans;
4. Trials with animals; 
5. Retrospective studies with respect to the preservation of personal data.

For case studies, (1) information regarding the informed consent form must be present; (2) permissions from other individuals' scales, questionnaires, and photos must be taken and indicated; and (3) it must be stated that there is no copyright infringement for intellectual properties. Ethics Committee Approval is not necessary for review articles. 

For articles that are already in the evaluation process in the journal and have Ethics Committee Approval, the corresponding authors should add information regarding the Ethics Committee Approval to their articles if it is accepted for publication, as stated above. On the other hand, for a study whose data were gathered before 2020, that was produced from the author's MSc/PhD thesis (should be indicated in the article), that was submitted to the journal last year, that is accepted but not yet published, backdate Ethical Committee Approval is not required. However, if the article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author must submit a signed declaration stating that the journal is not responsible for any ethical infringements to be faced in his/her study and that he/she has full responsibility. Researchers not affiliated with universities must obtain Ethical Committee Approvals for their studies that require Ethical Committee Approval from the Ethical Committee in their regions.

SPECIFIC CONFLICT OF INTEREST POLICIES

Submission by the Editor. A paper submitted by the editor will be handled by two independent referees who do not have a conflict with the review and are not affiliated with the same institution as the submitting editor. The editor implements the acceptance/rejection/revision decision made by the referees without any intervention in their comments. In such circumstances, masking is done so that independent reviewers cannot see the author(s) of the article.

Submission from the same institution. A paper submitted by the author at the same institution as the editor will be handled by two independent referees who do not have a conflict with the review and are not affiliated with the same institution as the submitting author. The editor implements the acceptance/rejection/revision decision made by the referees without any intervention in their comments. In such circumstances, masking is done so that independent reviewers cannot see the author(s) of the article.

Personal relationships. A paper submitted by a family member of the editor, or by an author whose relationship with the editor might create the perception of bias (e.g. in terms of close friendship or conflict/rivalry), will be handled by two independent external referees. The editor implements the acceptance/rejection/revision decision made by the referees without any intervention in their comments. In such circumstances, masking is done so that independent reviewers cannot see the author(s) of the article.

Previous review. If an editor is assigned to a manuscript for review that they had previously rendered a decision for another journal, then the editor should state they need to recuse themselves due to a previous review connection with that article without any further explanation or detail needed.