Editorial Policies

Editorial Policies

1.Manuscript Submission Guidelines

The Journal of Social Science publishes high-quality research and committed scholarly manuscripts on a global scale. Committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing, we encourage submissions from a variety of authors from all countries and backgrounds.

2.Pre-submission: Helping readers find your article

Before you submit your manuscript, it is important to review your title, keywords, and abstract. These elements are essential to ensure that readers are able to find your article on the internet through online search engines such as Google. It is important to choose the right title for your article and write your abstract because the more accurately the abstract is written, the more likely it is to be found on various search platforms and choose your keywords, which should not exceed 5 words that must be carefully chosen to express the content of the manuscript.

All authors' full names with affiliation organizations, country, and professional mail should be provided in order to improve the visibility of your article and ensure proper indexing and cross-linking, especially in English.

3.Submitting your article

The journal has its own editorial board and instructions for authors. To submit your article, visit the journal's homepage, click on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines link and submit your manuscript according to the publication terms.

Please be sure to read the journal's guidelines and adhere to its specific requirements. Please direct inquiries regarding the submission process to the journal's editorial board, details can be found in the journal's submission guidelines and more information can be found on the journal's website. 

The journal follows the ethics of scientific publishing and follows ethical guidelines to ensure best practices, which the author must honor.

4.Editorial policies

Peer Refereeing Policy

  • Please refer to the submission guidelines of the journal to which you wish to submit.
  • The journal does not allow the use of suggested (recommended) reviewerss by the author at any stage of the submission process, whether through the online submission system or other means of communication.
  • Reviewers must be experts in their fields and must be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. It is our policy not to appoint reviewers for scientific research in the following cases:

The reviewer resides in the same organization as any of the co-authors.

The reviewer is based at the funding organization of the paper.

The reviewer has been recommended by the author.

The reviewer has provided a personal email account (Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) and an institutional email account cannot be found after a basic Google search of name, department, and organization.

  • Please note that the journal editors are not required to invite any recommended or dissenting reviewers to evaluate your manuscript.
  • The referee is committed to the ethics of scientific research and publication by evaluating the submitted manuscripts objectively and impartially according to recognized scientific principles.
  • The article is judged by two referees in the specialty according to the subject matter of the submitted article.
  • The referee is required to review the articles within the deadlines agreed upon by the journal's editorial board
  • The journal is provided with the scientific biography of each referee, including degree, affiliation, and country.
  • The referee must inform the editorial board of any conflicts of interest when reviewing the submitted manuscripts before starting the refereeing process
  • The referee is required to maintain the confidentiality of the manuscripts during the refereeing process
  • The journal adopts the Double-Blind Peer Review model.

Editors' criteria:

  • Any manuscript submitted to the journal will be accepted and rejected on the basis of its scientific merit, originality, relevance, seriousness, and its contribution to scientific knowledge without any bias.
  • Only manuscripts that are in line with the research interests of the journal will be accepted.
  • Any unethical quality of manuscripts submitted for publication in the journal shall be reported.
  • Editors coordinate with referees by communicating periodically to review manuscripts accurately and effectively, while maintaining their confidentiality regardless of their type and not revealing the identity of the referees or authors to any party.
  • It is important to follow the journal's editorial policies and respect all publishing procedures in order to maintain the credibility of the journal and the quality of the research published in the journal.
  • Submitted manuscripts are subjected to a program to avoid scientific plagiarism, with the need to respect the plagiarism rate in accordance with the conditions of publication.

Publisher standards:

  • The publisher must adhere strictly to the ethical standards of publishing, in order to preserve the reputation and credibility of the journal.
  • The publisher shall provide all necessary support to the journal in order to promote and develop it and preserve the legally guaranteed copyrights
  • The publisher must intervene firmly and strictly to prevent articles or publications that violate the international ethical standards of publishing.

Authorship

  • The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship.
  • He or she agrees to be responsible for all aspects of the work to ensure that questions regarding the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are investigated and resolved appropriately by the author who submitted the manuscript.
  • Authors must fulfill the requirements of all of the above points. Each author must have been sufficiently involved in the work to assume overall responsibility for appropriate sections of the content.
  • When a large, multicenter group performs the work, the group must identify individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals must fully meet the criteria for authorship.
  • For authors submitting the manuscript, all parties who made a substantial contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Primary authorship, authorship ranking, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is typically listed as lead author on any multi-author publication that is substantially derived from the student's thesis or dissertation.

Corresponding author

The single person who has primary responsibility for communicating with the journal during manuscript submission, peer review, and the publication process, and typically ensures that all administrative requirements of the journal, such as submission of authorship details, ethics committee approval, trial and field study registration documents, and conflict of interest forms and statements are properly completed. However, these duties may be delegated to one or more of the co-authors.

The corresponding author is the person who signs the publication agreement on behalf of all authors and whose contact details are included in the article. They must be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for additional data or information should questions about the paper arise after publication.

Peer review and scientific evaluation policy (double-blind peer review statement)

The Journal of Social Sciences is committed to implementing a double-blind peer review system to ensure the quality, objectivity, and scientific integrity of all articles published in the journal. To this end, authors' identities are kept anonymous from reviewers throughout the evaluation process. The main stages of the peer review process are as follows:

Initial screening: Each article submitted to the journal is initially screened by the editorial board to ensure that it falls within the journal’s scope and subject areas and meets the various formal and substantive requirements for publication. A plagiarism check is also conducted.

Blinding and submission of the research: Once an article has been accepted for publication, all personal data relating to the authors (names, institution and country) is concealed. The author submits the article as two files: one containing their personal details (name, email address, institution and country), and another containing the full text of the article without any author information. The article is then sent to at least two reviewers who are experts in the same field. Reviewers must have expertise in the field in order to be able to evaluate articles.

 Evaluation criteria: The peer review process involves reviewers evaluating articles based on their originality, objectivity, scientific contribution and the soundness of their methodological procedures. Reviewers must submit a detailed report on each article they review, recommending one of the following: - Accept the paper for publication without revisions. - Acceptance of the paper for publication after minor revisions. - Re-evaluation of the paper after substantial revisions. - Final rejection.

Final decision: After reviewing the reviewers' reports, the editor-in-chief will make a final decision and communicate it to the author in a detailed report. If the reviewers are divided in their opinion (i.e. if they recommend acceptance or rejection), a third reviewer is consulted to resolve the matter.

 Prevention of conflicts of interest: The journal is committed to ensuring the independence of the review process by preventing conflicts of interest. To maintain objectivity and prevent any scientific bias that could compromise the quality of the work or influence the reviewer’s opinion, reviewers who belong to the same institution as the author or are collaborating with the author on a research project will be excluded.

5.Publication ethics

The Journal of Social Science is committed to maintaining the integrity of scholarly publishing. We encourage authors to refer to the International Standards for Authors established by the Publication Ethics Committee.

6.Contributor's Publishing Agreement

Open Access and Licensing Policy

The journal operates under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). Users are permitted to share and adapt the material for non-commercial purposes, provided they give appropriate credit, link to the license, and indicate any changes, without applying additional legal or technological restrictions.

Copyright and Publishing Rights Policy

Authors retain copyright and publishing rights without restriction, as indicated on the article metadata page. By submitting, authors guarantee the work is original, previously unpublished, and not under consideration elsewhere. The journal reserves the right to decline submissions that do not meet these original work standards. This policy operates under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

7.Open access publishing in the journal:

The journal allows open access publication of manuscripts

8.Preparing your manuscript

The journal uses double-blind peer review, authors are asked to submit a fully anonymized manuscript with a separate title page.

9.Formatting your article

The material submitted for publication must be original and has not been submitted for publication in any other entity, and the researcher submits a declaration to this effect and has no right to submit it for publication to any entity until it is decided by the journal's boards, and is liable to pay any damage in case of violation of this provision.

The author must notify the journal of any conflicts that may occur due to the submitted manuscript.

The author must follow the accepted scientific principles in preparing and writing research papers, especially with regard to proving sources of information, documenting quotations, and respecting scientific honesty in citing references, sources, and documentation.

If any plagiarism or any serious error in the article is proven, the article will be withdrawn from the journal's website and any aggrieved party can notify the journal.

The funding entity for the research, if any, must be identified when the article is submitted for publication by the author.

The article must be free of spelling, grammar, language and typographical errors.

For field studies, the known methodology should be respected, such as the review of the issue, the methodological procedures of the study, the method, the sample, the study instruments, the statistical methods, and the presentation and discussion of the results.

The journal adopts the American Psychological Association (APA) documentation system and the reference list is referenced accordingly.

When formatting your references, please be sure to check the journal's reference style and cite all references and sources referenced within the manuscript.

There is no need to follow a specific template when submitting your manuscript in Word. However, please make sure that your heading levels are clear, and that sections are clearly labeled.

We welcome the submission of LaTeX files.

10.Artwork guidelines

Illustrations, photos and diagrams should be provided in the highest quality and in an electronic format that helps us publish your article in the best possible way.

Color: Please note that images provided in color will be published online and in black and white (unless otherwise arranged). Therefore, it is important that you provide comprehensible images in black and white as well (i.e. using color with a distinctive pattern or dotted lines).

11.Submitting your manuscript

Please see the submission guidelines for the journal

You must have an account in order to submit your manuscript for publication in the journal

The format file type should be the same as for other article formats.

A caption should be provided with the drawing.

Do not use images under a copyright license for graphic abstracts.

The final visualized abstract image should be sent with the accepted article.

12.ORCID

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process, the Journal of Social Sciences is a supporting member of ORCID and the Open and Contributing Researcher Identifier.

ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from any other researcher, even those who share the same name, and through integration into key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated links between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

We encourage all authors and co-authors to link their ORCID IDs to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds: Click the link when prompted, log in to your ORCID account and our systems will automatically update. We collect ORCID IDs during the manuscript submission process and your ORCID ID then becomes part of the metadata of your accepted publication, making your work attributable to you alone. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

13.About acceptance and publication

Your editor will keep you informed of the progress of your article throughout the production process. Evidence in PDF format will be sent to the corresponding author and must be returned promptly.

The journal is committed to sending the referees' reports to the author within the final result which takes several forms:

  1. An accepted draft with no changes required
  2. Manuscript accepted for publication with major modifications
  3. Accepted manuscript with minor modifications
  4. Rejected manuscript

14.Access to the article:

The author has access to their published article where the final article can be viewed through the journal's website.

15. Online First Publishing

The journal provides an Online First service. Online First allows final, fully peer-reviewed and accepted articles (completed articles in the queue for assignment to an upcoming regular issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in the final journal issue. This service significantly reduces the lead time between manuscript submission, acceptance, and official publication, ensuring rapid dissemination of scientific research.

16.Digital Archiving & Long-Term Preservation Policy

The journal offers an Online First service. Online First allows final review articles (completed articles in the queue for assignment to an upcoming issue) to be published online before being included in the final issue of the journal, significantly reducing the time between submission and publication. To ensure the permanent availability, preservation, and accessibility of all published scholarly research, the Journal of Social Sciences is officially committed to long-term digital archiving. Full-text articles and metadata published in the journal are permanently archived and preserved through the CLOCKSS and LOCKSS international preservation systems, as well as the Internet Archive. This guarantees that the journal’s complete digital archive remains secure and accessible to the global scientific community in perpetuity, even in the event that the journal ceases publication or its primary servers experience disruption.

In addition, the journal assigns persistent Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) to all published articles through an agreement with Crossref, ensuring stable citation, traceability, and reliable referencing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.63939/JSS

17.Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence

We recognise the growing role of artificial intelligence in academic research and writing. We consider these tools to be valuable resources that can help researchers explore ideas, accelerate discovery, analyse results, refine language, and organise manuscripts more efficiently. Although generative AI tools can significantly improve the research workflow, they cannot replace human creativity, sound judgement or critical thinking. Our AI policy aims to help authors, reviewers and editors to make informed and ethical decisions when using these technologies.

For authors

AI is a supportive tool. We recognise that many authors now use AI tools to enhance their writing. These tools can assist with grammar, style, clarity, proofreading and structure. However, authors remain fully responsible for ensuring the accuracy, originality and integrity of their research.

Use of generative AI

If any part of the submitted research was generated by an AI tool — for example, if text was drafted, references were created, or images were produced — this must be explicitly disclosed. To ensure scientific accuracy and objectivity, authors should cite verifiable original sources rather than referencing the AI tool itself. If the majority of the manuscript was generated using AI, this must be indicated at the time of submission, to enable the editorial team to consider the implications.

Authors who use AI in this way must:

- Specify the AI tool or model used and its purpose. They must also carefully verify all AI-generated content to ensure its factual accuracy and the correctness of the citations used.

-They must also ensure that the content is free from any potential biases or errors.

They must compare the generated content with the original sources to ensure there is no plagiarism.

- Avoid fabricated citations or information and verify the validity of every claim before submission.

AI tools such as ChatGPT should not be listed in the authorship section.

While the use of AI is not grounds for automatic rejection, failure to disclose its use or irresponsible use (e.g. submitting fabricated or copied content) may result in rejection at any stage of the editorial process.

For reviewers and editors:

Using AI tools for editorial work can raise concerns about confidentiality and intellectual property. Many legal journals rely on user submissions and may therefore unintentionally reuse confidential content.

AI assistance for reviewers:

Reviewers can use AI to improve the clarity and structure of their reviews. However, they remain responsible for ensuring the accuracy, substance, and originality of the content.

For editors:

Editors are responsible for the integrity of the journal’s content. They can use AI tools to assist with administrative tasks, such as identifying potential reviewers. However, they must not use AI tools such as ChatGPT to draft editorial decisions or abstracts of unpublished works.

Inappropriate or undisclosed use of AI If any reviewer or editor suspects the inappropriate or undisclosed use of AI in any research or review, they must report it to the editorial team. The journal, in collaboration with the editorial board, will investigate these concerns in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and the journal's own internal policies.

The journal endeavors to promote scientific publishing and provide scientific addition to knowledge and receives various suggestions that work to develop the journal and improve the quality of its research.