Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

Update Date: 04.04.2024

The publication policy of TPHB aims to improve and disseminate information objectively and respectfully. Constituting the main content of TPHB, peer-reviewed studies are the ones that support and materialize the scientific method. It is expected that all the parties (editors, reviewers, authors, publishers, and readers) taking parts or playing roles in the process of producing a peer-reviewed product may also contribute to these processes to proceed on the right track. Aiming to arrive at this end, it is of utmost importance for scientific studies to follow ethical principles, rules, regulations, and considerations.

TPHB accepts the following ethical principles based on the guidelines and policies made by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). It is expected that all stakeholders of TPHB adopt, embrace and follow the ethical principles below.

Ethics summary

This journal follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)‘s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. Therefore, we genuinely recommend and appreciate it if authors read these recommendations before their manuscript submission. If research misconduct, fraud or plagiarism is suspected, editors will follow the COPE guidelines and reserve the right to inform authors or their institution.

Publication and Authorship

Authorship Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

Ethical Duties and Responsibilities of the Editor

Ethical Responsibilities of the Reviewers

Ethical Responsibilities of the Publisher

Publishing Ethics Issues

Processes for Appeals

Plagiarism Policy

Conflict of Interests

Open Access Policy

Copyright and License

Data Sharing

Information for Readers

Publication Fee Policy (Free of Charge)

Publication and Authorship

All submitted papers are subject to a strict peer-review process by at least two reviewers who are experts in the paper. Deputy Editors and Editor-in-Chief are selecting reviewers.
The factors that are considered in the review are relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity, and language.
The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revisions, major revisions, or rejection.
If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.
Paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism.
No research can be included in more than one publication, whether within the same journal or in another journal.

Authorship and Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

We required the authors to understand and accept the ethical policy especially:

Declaration of interests — it is important to declare the funding that made the research possible.
Registering clinical trials — clinical trials should be registered in publicly accessible registries.
Respecting confidentiality — protecting patients from being recognized if used in research and publication.
Protecting research subjects, patients, and experimental animals.
Author(s) must ensure the accuracy and truthfulness of the data used in the study; keep records of research processes and procedures neatly; and provide the relevant raw data and/or information, in case it is required by the editorial and scientific boards.
Authors need to ensure that their manuscript has not been published elsewhere or has not been accepted for publication in any other peer-reviewed journal.
People who have not contributed to the study at the intellectual level should not be indicated/assigned as authors.
Authors have to follow the related national and international rules and regulations, if their studies include animal and/or human subjects (for example, WMA Helsinki Declaration, PHS Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, The EU Directive on the Use of Animals); to prove that the necessary permissions and approvals are provided; to respect the privacy of subjects/participants.
If the manuscripts submitted to be published are subject to conflicting interests or relations, these must be shared with the editor and the publisher. If it is seen necessary, provide an annex or error proclaim or withdraw the manuscript.
During the peer-reviewing process, authors might be required to provide the raw data they used in their studies to the Editorial Board. So, they are expected to share the relevant data with the Editorial Board and to keep safe all relevant data at least for five years.
Author(s) bears the responsibility to inform the editor of the journal or publisher if they happen to notice a mistake in their study which is in the early release or publication process and to cooperate with the editors during the correction or withdrawal process.
Authors must certify that their manuscript is their original work.
Authors must participate in the peer review process and follow the comments.
Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research. The level of their contribution also must be defined in the “Authors’ Contributions” section of the article.
Authors must state that all data in the paper is authentic.
Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.
Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.
Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.
Authors must state that informed consent was obtained from all human adult participants and the parents or legal guardians of minors. Include the name of the appropriate institutional review board that approved the project.
The authors should follow the WMA Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects and clearly state this in their manuscripts.
Authors are recommended to conform to the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines for reporting animal studies.

Note= All manuscripts submitted to TPHB, which use data provided by human subjects/participants, are required to ensure that they have already gone under investigation and gained the relevant Ethics Committee’s approval. The Ethics Committee's name, the approval date, and the approval number should be stated on the title page, the methods section, and the last page of the manuscript. The authors are also required to provide evidence (i.e., getting permission from the relevant persons or bodies, when using questionnaires, scales, photos, or documents developed by others or belonging to others) that they obeyed the ethical rules and regulations during the data collection processes (in the Methods section of the Manuscript File. The name of the board should not be written here for blinding purposes). Further, it must also be stated in the manuscripts that the authors followed the relevant publication ethics and copyright policies. If the study includes human and animal subjects, it must be stated that the research was conducted by international guidance, rules, regulations, and standards. The authors are not required to submit an Ethics Committee approval if they only submit a review study. In case of this, it must be stated on the first and last pages of the manuscripts and in the methods section that the current study does not require an Ethics Committee approval. The manuscripts including case reports should also provide the information that an informed consent form was read, approved, and signed by the participants.

In the Title Pages file under the "Ethical Approval" section. The name of the board, approval number, and approval date should be included here.

The second use of data collected from human participants for further research purposes is exempt from ethics committee approval. This applies to the reuse of data by the original collector of the data for a purpose different from that for which they were collected and reused by other researchers (unless these uses are specifically encompassed in the original consent). Researchers seeking to reuse data that they did not collect themselves, and which are not in the public domain, should always seek the permission of the data controller for their use and comply with any research governance procedures required by the data controller before accessing the data.

There are many cases in which ethical review for the re-use of data collected from human participants will not normally be required. These are:

The reuse of data which are already in the public domain (i.e. published in books, journals, etc.).
The reuse of datasets for which consent for reuse for research purposes beyond which the data was originally gathered was provided by the participants and for which all data have been robustly anonymised. <top>

Ethical Duties and Responsibilities of the Editor

The editor and field editors of TPHB should hold the following ethical responsibilities that are based on the guides "COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" and "COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" published as Open Access by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). These can be accessed on the link below: https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf)

Editors (Deputy Editors or Editor-in-Chief) have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.
Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.
Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
Editors should have a clear picture of a research's funding sources.
Editors should base their decisions solely on the papers' importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the publication’s scope.
Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines.
Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.
Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions; they should have proof of misconduct.
Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers, and board members.
Editors must not change their decision after submitting a decision (especially after rejecting or accepting it) unless they have a serious reason.
While fulfilling editorial duties and responsibilities, adopting balanced and objective behaviors; and approaching the authors fairly without discriminating against anyone on the grounds of her/his gender, religious belief, political standpoint, ethnic background, or nationality.
Evaluate the manuscripts sent to TPHB based on the “manuscript submission guidelines”, the significance of the study, and its originality, and if she/he decides to reject a manuscript after the editorial evaluation, inform the authors of the rationale behind this decision clearly and objectively. Informing authors and allocating the necessary time for amendment, if she/he decides that a manuscript needs a thorough revision as a result of several typesetting, punctuation, writing, and layout errors as well as some problems related to the referencing system.
Taking the necessary cautions and assessing the demands from both sides, if there is a conflict of interests.
Assessing and evaluating the works submitted to TPHB based on their content, without providing privilege to any of them.
Handling sponsored research or studies on special topics in the way that all other manuscripts go through.
Supporting the authors’ freedom of expression.
If the authors demand information about their manuscripts, carefully inform them about the processes and state of their manuscripts without breaching the rules and regulations related to blind peer-reviewing processes.
Continuously updating the manuscript template presenting and explaining what has been expected from the authors.
Ensuring that all the published papers include the dates of sending and acceptance.
Endeavouring to improve the quality of the journal and contribute to its development.
If there is a complaint about breaching an ethical principle, take the necessary action in accordance with TPHB’s relevant policies and procedures. Providing the authors the necessary opportunities to answer the complaints addressed to their manuscript or to defend themselves, and imposing the relevant sanctions fairly and objectively.
Inviting the reviewers to express that they do not have any conflict of interest with the author(s) of a manuscript before starting to review it.
Renewing and expanding the number of reviewers while keeping their areas of expertise or specialities in mind.
Excluding those reviewers who do not fulfil their duties on time or provide feedback and comments being impolite and lacking quality.
Rejecting a manuscript that is not appropriate to TPHB’s aims and scope.
Finding and assigning new members for the Editorial Board, who have the potential to contribute to its development.
Informing the new members of the Editorial Board in relation to TPHB’s manuscript submission guide; explaining to them what is expected from a member of the Editorial Board, and informing them about their responsibilities.
Reviewing the critics/criticism about the journal and answering them, if it is seen as necessary. <top>

Ethical Responsibilities of the Reviewers

The fact that all manuscripts are reviewed through "Blind Double Review" has a direct influence on the publication quality. This process ensures confidentiality through objective and independent review. The review process at TPHB is carried out on the principle of double-blind review. Neither the reviewers know and/or contact the authors directly, nor do the authors have any information related to the reviewers. The reviews and comments are conveyed through the journal management system. In this process, the reviewer's views on the evaluation forms and full texts are assigned to the author(s) by the editor. Therefore, the reviewers doing review work for TPHB are supposed to bear the ethical responsibilities listed below. Reviewers must;

Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. No self-knowledge of the author(s) must affect their comments and decisions.
Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.
Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
Reviewers should also call to the Editor-in-Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Reviewers should not review 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.
To assist the editor in decision-making procedures, agree to review only those works in their subject of expertise and review the manuscript sent to them fairly, objectively, and on time.
Fill in the relevant ‘Reviewer Evaluation Form’ and ensure that any information related to her/his (the reviewer) identity has not been reflected in the form. Indicating her/his decision in respect of whether the manuscript should be accepted for publication or not along with the justification of this decision.
Review the manuscript objectively and only in terms of its content and ensure that nationality, gender, religious and political beliefs, and economic apprehension do not influence the review.
Rigorously review a manuscript in an unbiased and confidential manner and provide relevant feedback to improve its quality.
Review the manuscript in a constructive and kind tone, and avoid making personal comments including hostility, slander, and insult. If it is seen that the reviewers’ comments do not have a scientific quality, they might be invited to revise their assessment and feedback.
Review only the content of a manuscript objectively.
Protect the privacy of information provided by the editor or the author(s) and destroy the manuscript after the review process.
Inform the editor of the journal if they think that they encounter a problem that may harm the double-blind review process and decline to review the manuscript during the review process.
Dispose of the manuscripts they have reviewed in accordance with the principle of confidentiality after the review process. Reviewers can use the final versions of the manuscripts they have reviewed only after publication.
Be aware of the potential conflict of interests (financial, institutional, collaborative, or those between the authors or related to other relationships), and warn the editor to withdraw the relevant manuscript from the review process.
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Ethical Responsibilities of the Publisher

Like all other stakeholders, the publisher also has to obey ethical principles and behave accordingly.
The publisher bears all the responsibility to take precautions against scientific abuse, fraud, and plagiarism.
The publisher protects the intellectual property rights of all the articles published in TPHB and holds the responsibility of keeping a record of each published product.
The publisher accepts that the editor and editorial board are entitled to make all the decisions related to reviewing, editorial, and publication processes.
All stakeholders should not hesitate to contact the publisher if they see or recognize any unethical conduct or behaviour. <top>

Publishing Ethics Issues

All editorial members, reviewers, and authors must confirm and obey the rules defined by ICMJE.
The corresponding author is the main owner of the article so she/he can withdraw the article when it is incomplete (before entering the review process or when a revision is asked for).
Authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason.
All editorial members and authors will publish any kind of corrections honestly and completely.

Processes for Appeals

The authors do have the right to appeal if they have genuine cause to believe that the editorial board has wrongly rejected the paper. If the authors wish to appeal against the decision, they should email the editorial office (email: editor@tphbjournal.com) explaining in detail the reason for the appeal. The appeals will be acknowledged by the editorial office and will be investigated in an unbiased manner. The processing of appeals will be done within 8 weeks. While under appeal, the said manuscript should not be submitted to other journals. The final decision rests with the Editor in Chief of the journal. Second appeals are not considered.

Plagiarism Policy

İntentionally or not, plagiarism means breaching research ethics. Publishing a piece of work having similar or the same content as other studies without citing them is ethical misconduct as well as an offence against the law. The editorial board has the right to act by COPE’s rules and regulations in case of any claim related to a manuscript having plagiarism, referencing manipulation, and/or data forgery. The manuscripts having correspondences with other studies over 25% will be sent back to their authors without the initiation of the peer-review policy. The authors may submit their manuscripts after ensuring that the correspondence report of their respective manuscripts shows less than 25% similarity. <top>

Misconduct of Scientific Research and Publication Ethics

Plagiarism: Using other persons’ original thoughts, methods, data, or products without citing the sources or presenting another person’s work as one’s own partially or as a whole;
Forgery: Using data that does not exist or is being distorted;
Distortion: Distorting, spoiling, or corrupting research records or data; Claiming that some tools or materials have been used in the research that are not being utilized for the study. Altering, distorting, or shaping the research results to fit in the interests of those persons or institutions supporting the research;
Duplication: Using the same research data in more than one piece of work;
Slicing: Dividing the results of research into several pieces that violate its integrity it and then publishing them as separate research papers;
Undeserved authorship: Indicating those persons as authors who did not actively contribute to the production of the manuscript or not indicating the ones that contributed to the study in question. Changing the order of the author names inappropriately and unnecessarily;
Not indicating/including the relevant information about persons/institutions/organizations supporting the research and their support;
Citing those dissertations/theses or papers that have not yet been submitted or published;
Not following the ethical rules and regulations and/or not obtaining the necessary permissions before conducting research involving human and/or animal subjects. Not respecting patients’ rights, giving harm to animals’ health and ecological balance;
The misuse or abuse of resources, places, means, and tools that have been provided/allocated for the research;
Proclaiming misleading/fallacious information related to scientific research and publications. <top>

Conflict of Interests

According to ICMJE, conflict of interest occurs when a financial or personal relationship exists between any participant in the peer review and publication process – authors, reviewers, editors, or editorial board members of journals – and might bias or be seen to bias fulfilling their role.

First, any conflict of interest in each manuscript should be reported by submitting the ICMJE form for Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest on the “Trends in Public Health and Behavior” website. Then we utilize COPE workflow to transparently handle it.

Matters in which persons or groups benefit economically or personally may also cause a conflict of interest. The reliability of scientific research and published papers is partly related to objectively handling the conflicts of interest in the processes of planning, applying, writing, assessing, revising, and publishing them.
Financial relations might include the most easily defined conflicts of interest, which may inevitably influence the reliability of the journal as well as the authors in a negative way. , These conflicts may arise from various issues including interpersonal relationships, academic competition, or intellectual approaches. The authors may want to avoid those sponsors, either commercial or non-profit ones, that may restrict access to all study data or propose to interfere with the processes of data analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, publication, etc.
To prevent conflict of interests, the editors may try not to assign certain people as reviewers of certain manuscripts submitted by certain authors The editor giving the final decision about a manuscript should ensure that she/he does not have a personal or financial relationship with the relevant author(s).
To make the reviewing processes independent of any unethical conduct, the authors are expected to inform the editorial board in case of a potential conflict of interest.
The editorial board of TPHB promises to consider all these possibilities and strive to make the reviewing process as objective as possible. <top>

Open Access Policy

TPHB allows free access (Open Access) to its contents and permits authors to self-archive final accepted versions of the articles on any OAI-compliant institutional/subject-based repository. Aiming to support the idea of accessing information most easily, TPHB adopts an open-access policy and supports the idea of requiring peer-reviewed journals to become open-access appearing in the Budapest Open Access Initiative signed on September 12, 2012. Thus, the open-access policies adopted by the editorial board of TPHB can be found at http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10-recommendations.

Budapest Open Access Initiative defines the concept of “open access” as [peer-reviewed works’] “… free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”

In this respect, authors hold the copyrights of their manuscripts as well as the final papers. The authors hold the copyright without any restrictions. Copyright transfer agreements and similar agreements are not requested from the authors. Solely for keeping the integrity and quality all TPHB content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. This license terms are not binding for authors. TPHB full-text articles are published online immediately after their procedures and are openly and freely accessible afterwards. No fees or subscriptions are required for access to the full-text articles. In thinking of sharing knowledge/information in the expansion of scientific developments, open-access policies promise great potential for researchers and readers. Based on this perspective, TPHB invites its readers to freely access and use its published works by referring to their sources and authors. The readers do not need to obtain permission from the authors or the publisher. <top>

Creative Commons

All articles published by TPHB are licensed with “Creative Commons Attribution License (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International CC BY-NC-ND)”. This license entitles all parties to use scientific work for a non-profit purpose under the condition of providing references. Open access is an approach that eases interdisciplinary communication and encourages cooperation among different disciplines. Therefore, TPHB contributes to the field of social media research by providing more access to its articles and a more transparent review process. The publication processes of TPHB are executed by the manuals of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), National Information Standards Organization (NISO, Council of Science Editors (CSE), and European Association of Science Editors (EASE).

Authors who send their manuscripts to the Trends in Public Health and Behaviour (TPHB) read and approve the text of the responsibility statement on the screen of the control list when they upload their studies on the online system of the journal. By marking the box “I warrant that it conforms with the items above” at the end of the control list, it is deemed to have accepted the text of the responsibility statement.

Author(s) declare(s) to approve the statements at below:

The manuscript sent to be published in the Trends in Public Health and Behaviour (TPHB) is the author(s) own original work,
A part or the whole of this work has been not published and has not been sent for publication elsewhere.
All the authors have read and approved the manuscript as it is. They all acknowledge that it has been sent to TPHB for publication.
The author(s) are responsible for the content and information presented in the manuscript.
All approved rights such as patents, etc. copyrights are of the author(s);
The author(s) can use the whole work in their books, courses, oral presentations, and conferences.
They have the right to reproduce the work as a whole or in part for their use.
That the text, figures, and documents in the article do not violate the copyrights of the third parties, the publisher is not responsible for any claims or lawsuits to be made by third parties due to copyright infringement, and all responsibility belongs to authors. <top>

The Processes of Reviewing and Publishing Manuscripts

The reviewing process of the manuscripts sent to TPHB proceeds following these steps:

The manuscript is reviewed by the Editor to see whether its aims, subject, content, and style of writing fit the requirements of TPHB (Maximum 10 days). The manuscript is approved by the Editor and sent to the Field Editor. Other manuscripts not approved by the Editor were sent back to their authors/owners for revision and resubmission.
The examination/review of the Field Editor results in the decision of either sending the manuscript to reviewers or returning it to their authors/owners for revision (Maximum 10 days).
The selection processes of referees are based on expertise and experience in the relevant field. The referees are given 20 days to review a manuscript sent to them.
If a reviewer thinks that she/he cannot complete the reviewing process within the given time, she/he can ask the Editor for extra time or let the Editor know that she/he is not able to review the manuscript due to various reasons, such as the shortage of time. Doing these things helps the Editor assign new reviewers without losing too much time.
If a reviewer cannot review the manuscript assigned to her/him within the given scope of time, she/he is sent a reminder e-mail with an additional 10 days to complete the reviewing process. If she/he does not return the reviewed manuscripts within the additional time, that manuscript may be withdrawn from her/him. After that, it is assigned to another reviewer.
If there is a divergence of opinion between the two reviewers (one accepting the manuscript and the other rejecting it), the field editor examines the review reports and compares and contrasts the reviewers’ critics and viewpoints, as well as their reasoning to arrive at a decision.
If the field editor may not decide after examining the reviewer's reports, then the manuscript is assigned to a third reviewer.
The decision for a manuscript is supposed to be given within the first 90-120 days. Then the authors are informed about the decision. The accepted papers are to be published in the following issue of TPHB. <top>

Copyright and License

TPHB allow the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions. Also, the journal allows the author(s) to retain publishing rights without restrictions.

Data Sharing

TPHB encourages authors to share the data and any other material associated with methodology and the results of the submitted articles, in an appropriate public repository, or as open-access supplementary to the article. Therefore, the results of clinical trials must contain a data-sharing statement. However, in other manuscripts, we recommend it. in line with ICMJE recommendations, a data-sharing statement is required for manuscripts reporting the results of clinical trials, on whether and how the data will be available. For more information, please consult ICMJE recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html#two).

Information for Readers

We highly encourage readers to subscribe to our publishing notification service for this journal. Simply click the "Register" link on the main menu of the journal's website. Subscribing will ensure that you receive the Table of Contents by email for each new issue of the journal. This subscription list also helps us gauge the level of support and readership for our journal. Rest assured; your privacy is important to us. Please review the journal's Privacy Statement, which guarantees that your name and email address will not be used for any other purposes.

Publication Fee Policy (Free of Charge)

TPHB does not require any subscription publication fee or any other type of payment for accessing and/or using electronic information sources. TPHB does not charge any fee from the authors during the publication process. <top>