Journal of Turkish Court of Accounts

The TCA Journal complies with national and international publication ethics standards. It adopts the following principles based on the principles determined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (https://publicationethics.org/) and the Directive on Scientific Research and Publication Ethics of Higher Education Institutions published by the Council of Higher Education.

Responsibilities of the Editor and Editorial Board

• The editors (Editor in Chief, Editor, issue editors, and other editors) and the Editorial Board are responsible for ensuring that the manuscripts published in the journal comply with the journal's publication policy and the journal's purpose and scope, and for carrying out the necessary work to raise the journal's quality standards.
• The editors and the Editorial Board are responsible for evaluating the studies submitted for publication only in terms of academic competence and scientific originality, regardless of the authors' ethnic origin, nationality, gender, religious beliefs, and political preferences. They maintain confidentiality during the evaluation process. 
• The editors and the Editorial Board undertake not to have a conflict of interest regarding the accepted or rejected articles and to prioritize academic concerns and criteria in the article acceptance and evaluation processes.
• The editors' obligations are to submit articles suitable for their field of expertise to the Editorial Board members and reviewers for evaluation; to ensure that the evaluation processes are carried out in accordance with publication policies, publication ethics, and academic requirements; and not to allow any conflict of interest between the editors, Editorial Board members, reviewers, and authors. They ensure that the evaluation processes are completed in an independent and impartial manner.
• The editors are responsible for supporting academic diversity of views and scientific freedom of thought, protecting intellectual property rights and ethical standards, and protecting human and animal rights.
• The editors are obliged to carry out all processes in accordance with the criteria of accountability and to meet the information requests of the authors and readers. They undertake all kinds of responsibilities regarding legal processes in line with their job descriptions.
• The editors' responsibilities are to constantly update the reviewer pool of the journal and to create the most appropriate range; to encourage reviewers to evaluate manuscripts with an impartial, scientific, and objective approach; to remove those reviewers from the reviewer pool who do not return within the deadline or do not comply with the reviewer ethics; and to prevent unethical and offensive reviews before they reach the author.
• The editors meticulously take into account the criticisms of the manuscripts published in the journal. They take a constructive attitude in this regard and consider the feedback as an opportunity to increase publication quality.

Responsibilities of the Reviewers

The TCA Journal undertakes to carry out the review process in line with the principles of universal academic publication. For this purpose, the reviewers are expected to act in accordance with the following principles while reviewing the studies that are in the evaluation process:

• The reviewers should make their evaluations with the awareness that they are the basic assurance of the academic quality of the studies to be published in the journal and with the responsibility of increasing academic quality. They should be able to contribute to the editor in the decision-making phase and to the authors in the improvement of the texts.
• The reviewers should only accept requests to review studies for which they have the necessary expertise to make an adequate evaluation.
• The reviewers should complete their evaluations within the time allotted to them. If they cannot accomplish this, they should notify the editor within a reasonable time.
• The reviewers are responsible for evaluating the submitted studies fairly and impartially, notifying the editor of any copyright infringement, plagiarism, and other ethical violations they detect, and maintaining the confidentiality required by the blind reviewer process.
• The reviewers should avoid superficial and vague expressions in their evaluation reports. They should explain in a concrete way the deficiencies and flaws of the studies for which they have negative opinions.
• The reviewers’ reports should be objective and measured. They should only contain academic evaluations made on the text. They should be written in a constructive language. They should avoid making statements about the inadequacies of the authors and harming their personalities.

Responsibilities of the Authors

• The authors should ensure that the studies they submit for publication are original and have not been previously published or sent for publication anywhere, in any language,.
• The compliance of the submitted studies with scientific rules and ethical principles is the responsibility of the authors. The authors should observe the applicable copyright laws and treaties. They should use copyrighted materials with appropriate permission and thanks. They should avoid practices that are against scientific publication ethics (plagiarism, forgery, distortion, republishing, slicing, unfair authorship, not specifying the supporting organization, not complying with ethical rules in studies on animals, etc.). If they receive any financial support during the preparation or publication of the study, they should clearly state this.
• For studies that require ethical committee permission, legal permission, or special permission, the relevant permission document should be submitted by clearly stating from which institution, on which date, and with what decision or number the permission was obtained.
• All sources used should be cited appropriately. All works cited in the text should be included in the bibliography. The works that are not cited should not be included in the bibliography. The citation method through transfer from another source should be used only for works that are not available.
• All authors should have a direct academic and scientific contribution to the submitted studies. The names of those who did not meet the criteria for authorship but contributed to the study should be included in the first page footnote with acknowledgments. The naming order of the authors should be a joint decision of the authors.
• The corresponding author is the author who undertakes the responsibility for the manuscript on behalf of other authors for its submission to the journal, the communication process with the journal, and post-publishing processes. He/she is obliged to inform other authors about the evaluation and publication processes. It is assumed that the corresponding author has reached an agreement with the other authors in the whole process related to the manuscript.
• The authors should comply with the journal's authoring rules. They should submit all kinds of information and documents requested by the reviewer and editor on time. They should meticulously make the desired changes within a reasonable time.
• The authors should disclose any financial relations, conflicts of interest, and competition of interest that may affect the results of the research or scientific evaluation. They are responsible for immediately contacting and cooperating with the editor for correction or retraction if they detect a significant error or inaccuracy during the evaluation process.