Guide for Authors

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

The authors who submit their manuscripts to the journal are expected to comply with the following ethical responsibilities:

• Author(s) must submit original studies to the journal. If they utilize or use other studies, they must make the in-text and end-text references accurately and completely.
• People who have not contributed to the study at the intellectual level should not be indicated as author.
• These must be explained if the manuscripts submitted to be published are subject to conflicting interests or relations.
• During the review process of their manuscripts, author(s) may be asked to supply raw data. In such a case, the author(s) should submit such data and information to the editorial board.
• Author(s) should document that they have the participants' consent and the necessary permissions related to the sharing and research/analysis of the used data.
• Author(s) bears the responsibility to inform the editor of the journal or publisher if they happen to notice a mistake in their study in early release or publication process and cooperate with the editors during the correction or withdrawal process.
• Authors cannot submit their studies to multiple journals simultaneously. Each submission can be made only after the previous one is completed. A study published in another journal cannot be submitted to the journal
• Author responsibilities given in a study (e.g., adding an author, reordering of author names) cannot be changed if the review process has begun. See. EASE Ethics Checklist for Authors

Principles of Writing and Publishing

• Articles should contain an English title, an extended abstract (500-600 words), keywords (5 concepts), and a bibliography prepared with the APA Style.
• The journal publishes studies such as a research article, a review article, a theoretical article, an opinion article, a case report, an opinion letter, a teaching practice, translation), a meeting abstract, a book review, a legislation review, a decision review, a film review, a conference paper, and a review of the literature short communication.
• Scientific, intellectual, and literary responsibilities of published articles belong to their author.
• The journal reserves the right to make corrections, to publish or not to publish articles.
• The journal uses a double-blind peer review system. Submissions found suitable are referred to three referees in relevant fields. The names of the referees are kept confidential and referee reports are archived for five years. If one of the referee reports is positive and the other is negative, the article may be forwarded to a third referee for further assessment or the Editorial Board may make a final decision based on the three reports' nature. The authors are responsible for revising their articles in line with the referees' criticism and suggestions and the Editorial Board. If they disagree with any issues, they may object by providing clearly-stated reasons. The list of reviewers is published on the web page at the end of each year.
• The publication language of the journal is Turkish and English. Studies written in other languages can also be published with the decision of the Editorial Board.

• Submitted manuscripts must not have been published previously nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. 
• The journal follows an Open Access Policy (CC BY-NC-ND).
• The journal will acquire copyright over all published material. Authors may reproduce their published material elsewhere subsequently with the usual acknowledgment to ‘Social Paradigm Journal’ (SPJ) and the volume and page details. Third parties who wish to reproduce published material should write to the editorial office for permission.
• Articles must be sent in the format stated below. Articles that are not uploaded to the system in this format will not be evaluated.
• Paper Size: A4 Vertical
• Top Margin: 2.5 cm
• Bottom Margin: 2,5 cm
• Left Margin: 3 cm
• Right Margin: 2,5 cm
• Font: Times News Roman
• Font Style: Normal
• Type Size (Regular Text): 11
• Type Size (Footnote Text): 9
• Paragraph Spacing: 6 nk
• Line Spacing: 1
• In the special font used articles, the font used should be sent with the article.
• Articles should not be included details such as page numbers, headers, and footers.
• Please use the MS word template.

Copyright Notice

The manuscripts submitted to the journal for publication should be original studies that were not published before or not submitted to anywhere else for publication.

Authors who submit their studies to SPJ should acknowledge that they have to transfer the copyright of their studies to SPJ . The editorial board of the journal is authorized to publish the study. Nonetheless, the following rights are reserved:

• Patent rights,
• All unregistered rights apart from copyright,
• Duplication rights on condition that the study is not sold,
• The right to use the whole or parts of the study in the author's own books or other academic studies on condition that reference is given,
• The right to publish the study on personal websites or the open archive of their university on condition that the copyright details are provided.

Privacy Statement

Personal information like names and e-mail addresses submitted to the SPJ journal management system will be used exclusively for this journal's scientific aims. Such information will not be used for other purposes and will not be shared with third parties.

Writing A Research Paper

Title: should be unambiguous, understandable to specialists in other fields, and reflect the article's content.

List of authors: The authors listed first should be those who did most. The name order of authors should be determined before submission of the manuscript. Any changes made after submission should be approved by all authors and explained to the journal editor. Names of authors must be supplemented with their affiliations (during the study) and the present address of an author for correspondence. E-mail addresses of all authors should be provided so that they can be contacted easily. ORCID IDs of all authors should be stated.

Extended Abstract: briefly explain why you conducted the study (BACKGROUND), what question(s) you aimed to answer (OBJECTIVES), how you performed the study (METHODS), what you found (RESULTS: major data, relationships), and your interpretation and main consequences of your findings (CONCLUSIONS). The abstract must reflect the article's content, as for most readers, it will be the major source of information about your study. It would be best to use keywords within the abstract to facilitate on-line searching for your article by those who may be interested in your results (many databases include only titles and abstracts). Do not refer in the abstract to tables or figures, as abstracts are also published separately. References to the literature are also not allowed unless they are necessary (but then you need to provide detailed information in brackets: author, title, year, etc.). Make sure that all the information given in the abstract also appears in the main body of the article. Remember to comply with the journal’s instructions to authors in respect of abstract length, style of references, etc.

List of keywords: include all relevant scientific terms or only additional keywords that are absent from the title (if required by the editors). Keep the keywords specific. Add more general terms if your study has interdisciplinary significance.

Introduction: explain why the study was needed and specify your research objectives or the question(s) you aimed to answer. Start from more general issues and gradually focus on your research question(s).

Methods: describe in detail how the study was carried out (eg study area, data collection, criteria, the origin of analyzed material, sample size, number of measurements, age and sex of participants, equipment, data analysis, statistical tests, and software used).

Results: present the new results of your study (usually published data should not be included in this section). All tables and figures must be mentioned in the main body of the article and numbered in the order they appear in the text. Make sure that the statistical analysis is appropriate. Data on humans, animals or any material originating from humans or animals should be disaggregated by sex. Do not fabricate or distort any data, and do not exclude any important data; similarly, do not manipulate images to make a false impression on readers. Such data manipulations may constitute scientific fraud.

Discussion: this section is not the place to present new results, including statistical results. Answer your research questions (stated at the end of the Introduction) and compare your main results with published data as objectively as possible. Discuss their limitations and highlight your main findings. If your study included subjects of one sex, discuss the implications and potential to generalize your findings for both sexes. Consider any findings that run contrary to your point of view. To support your position, use only methodologically sound evidence. At the end of the Discussion or in a separate section, emphasize your major conclusions and the practical significance of your study.

Acknowledgments: mention all people who contributed substantially to the study but cannot be regarded as co-authors, and acknowledge all sources of funding. The recommended form is: “This work was supported by the Research Council [grant number xxxx]”. If no specific funding was provided, use the following sentence: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.”. If relevant, disclose to the editors any other conflicts of interest, eg financial or personal links with the manufacturer or with an organization that has an interest in the submitted manuscript. If you reproduce previously published materials (eg figures), ask the copyright owners for permission and mention them in the captions or in the acknowledgments. If you were helped by a language professional (eg author’s editor or translator), a statistician, data collectors, etc., you should acknowledge their assistance for the sake of transparency. It must be clear that they are not responsible for the final version of the article. You need to ensure you have the consent of all the people named in this section.

References: make sure that you have provided sources for all information extracted from other publications. In the list of references, include all data necessary to find them in a library or in the Internet. For non-English publications, give the original title (transliterated according to English rules if necessary), wherever possible followed by its translation into English in square brackets. Avoid citing inaccessible, coercive, and irrelevant references. Wherever appropriate, cite primary research articles instead of reviews. Do not include unpublished data in the list of references – if you must mention them, describe their source in the main body of the article, and obtain permission from the producer of the data to cite them.

Scientific content

Clearly distinguish your original data and ideas from those of other people and from your earlier publications – provide citations whenever relevant. Preferably summarize or paraphrase text from other sources. This also applies to translations. When copying text literally (eg, a whole sentence or longer text), put it in inverted commas (eg, Roig 2011, Kerans & de Jager 2010). Otherwise, you could commit plagiarism (see COPE flowcharts) or self-plagiarism.

Define every uncommon or ambiguous scientific term at first use. You can list its synonyms if there are any (to aid in searching) but later employ only one of them consistently (to prevent confusion).

Avoid unclear statements, which require the reader to guess what you meant.

When reporting percentages, make clear what you regard as 100%. When writing about correlations, relationships, etc., make clear which values you are comparing with which.

Text structure

Sentences generally should not be very long. Their structure should be relatively simple, with the subject located close to its verb. Do not overuse passive constructions.

The text should be cohesive, logically organized, and thus easy to follow.

Each paragraph preferably should start with a topic sentence, and the next sentences fully develop the topic.

Make figures and tables easily understandable without reference to the main body of the article. Omit data that are not informative.

Language & Style

Wherever scientific terms are not necessary, preferably use commonly known words.

Define abbreviations when they first appear in the main body of the article (if they may be unclear to readers). Do not use too many different abbreviations, as the text would be hard to understand. Do not abbreviate terms that are used only rarely in your manuscript. Avoid abbreviations in the abstract.

In general, use the past tense when describing how you performed your study and what you found or what other researchers did. Preferably use the present tense in general statements and interpretations (eg, statistical significance, conclusions) or when writing about your article's content, especially tables and figures.

Unless otherwise required by the editors, do not write about yourself “the author(s)”, as this is ambiguous. Instead, write “we” or “I” if necessary, or use expressions like “in this study”, “our results” or “in our opinion”.

Check if all verbs agree in number with their subjects and if the references for all pronouns are clear.

Read the text aloud to check punctuation. All intonation breaks necessary for proper understanding should be denoted with commas or other punctuation marks.

Do not include information that is not relevant to your research question(s) stated in the Introduction.

Do not copy parts of your previous publications, and do not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at a time. Otherwise, you may be responsible for redundant publication (see COPE flowcharts: http://www.publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).

Information given in one section preferably should not be repeated in other sections. Obvious exceptions include the abstract, the figure legends, and the concluding paragraph.

Consider whether all tables and figures are necessary. Data presented in tables should not be repeated in figures (or vice versa). Long lists of data should not be repeated in the text.

Captions to tables and figures must be informative but not very long.

Preferably delete obvious statements (eg, “Forests are very important ecosystems.”) and other redundant fragments (eg, “It is well known that…”).

If a long scientific term is frequently repeated, define its abbreviation at first use in the main body of the article, and later apply it consistently

Express your doubts if necessary but avoid excessive hedging (eg write “are potential” rather than “may possibly be potential”). However, do not overgeneralize your conclusions.

Unless required otherwise by the editors, use numerals for all numbers, ie, also for one-digit whole numbers, except for zero, one (if without units), and other cases where misunderstanding is possible, eg at the beginning of a sentence or before abbreviations containing numbers.

Ask a thoughtful colleague to read the whole text to see if there are any ambiguous fragments.

Submitting Your Manuscript

• Go to the website. Click the "Register" section, fill in the requested information, and then click the "Save" button. After the editor approves your membership, click “Sign in.” You will be included in your own system within the journal by writing your e-mail and password.
• After logging in to the system, click the "Go to Author Home Page" section from the menu on the left and click "Send New Article" from the drop-down menu, click the "Click to browse" section, and attach the word document from your computer.
• When the process of your article reaches the review stage, and a report is sent from your referees, an e-mail /SMS will be sent to the e-mail you use and your mobile phone. Re-enter the system and click on "Details" on the right side of your article from the "Articles in process" section, click on the "Review report" statements, scroll down the page, examine the report -if there is one- click on the "File Uploaded by the Referee" at the bottom and download it to your computer. After making the necessary corrections on the word document of your work, enter the system again and add the file you corrected by clicking on the "Process" menu at the far right of your article title from the "Articles in Process" section and then click "Upload Edited Article."
• Make your correction after all referee reports have arrived and added them to the system.