Issue 93 · Spring 2020

Dear readers,

In the editorial note, I would like to share with you some information regarding the indexes in which bilig is scanned and also developments about our journal.

bilig - Journal of Social Sciences of the Turkic World, published within the body of the Chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of Ahmet Yesevi University since 1996, is scanned by many international indexes, especially the SSCI - Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science) and SCOPUS (Elsevier Bibliographic Databases). One of the few journal scanned by SSC in the field of social sciences in Turkey, bilig, has been among the 74 journals indexed in the Area Studies field at SSCI since 2008, and is ranked in the fourth quarter (Q4).

According to Journal Citation Reports data, it has been observed that there has been a continuity in the increase of the impact factor of the journal as of 2008. Similarly, SCOPUS CiteScore value of bilig journal has increased significantly. bilig has made a great contribution to both the Turkic world and universal science by giving access to a total of 600 articles which have successfully completed effective evaluation processes in SSCI since 2008. This contribution is extremely significant in terms of specifically the visibility of the universities in Turkey and in international rankings places such as The Ranking of Higher Education (THE) and the QS World University Ranking.

As of 2015, article acceptance and evaluation processes in bilig have been carried out electronically through the “Manuscript Handling System” at bilig.yesevi.edu.tr. In 2020, we have updated our website by upgrading new version of this system. We wish our readers and authors would enjoy our user-friendly, mobile-friendly new web page.

One of the innovations that are added to our website is ethical principles. According to these principles, authors submitting their work to bilig are obliged to meet the ethical principles stated below:

Authorship of the paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the study. Authorship has been agreed prior to submission and that no one has been ‘gifted’ authorship or denied credit as an author (“ghost authorship”).

Acknowledgements: Those (institutions and financial resources) who have provided support but have not contributed to the research should be acknowledged in an Acknowledgements section.

Originality and purity of plagiarism: The submitted work should be entirely owned by the authors. If the work of other researchers is included in the manuscript, it should be cited appropriately and listed in the references. The author is obliged to check the manuscript with one of the plagiarism prevention software, Turnit-in or iThenticate, and submit the similarity report to the journal for application. Manuscripts with a similarity rate of 15% or more will not be considered.

Ethics committee permission and approval: Authors are required to describe in their manuscripts ethical approval from an appropriate committee and how consent was obtained from participants when research involves human participants.

Redundant publication: Authors are expected to submit original, previously unpublished content to bilig. It is unacceptable to submit the work for a review to another journal at the same time.

Salami publication or salami slicing: Authors should not present the results of a research as separate publications in academic appointments and promotions by disaggregating and disseminating the results of the research in an inappropriate manner and disrupting the integrity of the research.

Data access and retention: Authors are required to submit the raw data of their research when requested by the editors and referees, and keep this data after publication.

Fundamental errors in published works: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published article, it is the author›s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

bilig continues its publishing life without compromising universal criteria in order to further strengthen its pioneering position in the field of social sciences. I wish our new issue will be of use.

Best Regards

Prof. Dr. Fırat Purtaş

Editor in Chief