Publication Principles

1. Nature of the Review

The Cyberspace, Space, and Law Review is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The Review is published online only, with one issue a year (December).

Academic articles undergo double-blind peer review after an initial screening. The Student Forum is reserved for articles by undergraduate students. These papers appear not in the issue but in the monthly Student Forum Bulletin, and are not counted as peer-reviewed articles.

The Review follows the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the joint "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing" of DOAJ, OASPA, COPE and WAME.

2. Fee policy

The Review charges no fees at any stage. Submission, initial screening, peer review, language and copy editing, typesetting, DOI assignment and publication are free of charge. No fee is requested from authors or their institutions under any name. Readers have free access to all published works.

Editors and reviewers are not paid.

3. Open access policy

The Review follows a free open access policy. All published works are available from the moment of publication, without embargo and without registration.

Works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. Provided that the use is non-commercial and proper attribution is given, readers may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search and link to the full text of works without asking permission from the author or the publisher.

4. Copyright, licence and duplicate publication

4.1. Copyright

Under Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works, the economic and moral rights in a work remain with the authors. The Review does not ask authors to transfer copyright. Authors receive no royalties, and no fee is charged to authors under any name.

4.2. Publication licence granted to the Review

When a work is accepted for publication, the authors grant Kulular Bilişim Teknolojileri Limited Şirketi (the Publisher), through the Author Declaration and License Form, a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence covering the following rights:

• To publish the work for the first time in the Review, to reproduce it in electronic form and to communicate it to the public
• To edit the work for typesetting, proofreading and formatting, and to adapt it to the Review's template without changing its content
• To transmit the metadata and full text of the work to indexes, databases and archives
• To convert the work into other formats and archive it for long-term preservation

4.3. Licence for readers

The work, as published in the Review, is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. This licence cannot be revoked. Provided that proper attribution is given to the author, the work, the Review and the licence, and that the use is non-commercial, readers may copy, distribute, adapt and build upon the work. Permission for commercial use is obtained from the authors.

4.4. Prohibition of duplicate publication

The fact that copyright remains with the author does not mean that the work may be republished as a new work in another journal, book or outlet. Republishing elsewhere a work that is identical or substantially identical to one published in the Review is duplicate publication and is handled under the procedure on the Publication Ethics page. Where part of the work is used in later research, the original publication in the Review is cited.

4.5. Sharing and archiving

Authors may share the submitted, accepted and published versions of their works on personal pages, in institutional repositories, in open repositories and on academic profiles, without embargo. Such sharing is not a new publication. The original publication in the Review and, where available, its DOI are cited when sharing.

4.6. Responsibility of authors

Authors bear full responsibility for the views in the work, the accuracy of information and data, citations and the rights of third parties.

4.7. Third-party content

Where the work uses tables, figures, images, maps or long quotations belonging to third parties, the author is responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions. Permission documents are uploaded with the submission. The CC BY-NC 4.0 licence does not apply to such content unless the rights holder has given permission. This is stated below the content concerned.

4.8. Notices of infringement

Anyone who believes that a work published in the Review infringes their rights sends the claim and its grounds to teknoloji@kulular.com. The notice is examined under the procedure on the Publication Ethics page. Where necessary, an expression of concern is published, a correction is made or the work is retracted.

5. Similarity and plagiarism policy

Works submitted to the Review undergo a similarity check at the initial screening stage. The check is carried out with iThenticate or equivalent software.

Excluding the bibliography and quotations shown in quotation marks, works with a similarity rate above 20% are rejected outright. Works with more than 5% similarity to a single source are examined separately by the editor, whatever the overall rate.

The similarity rate alone is not a decision criterion. Where plagiarism is found in a work, action is taken under the procedure on the Publication Ethics page even if the rate is low.

6. Originality and simultaneous submission

Works submitted to the Review must not have been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. Submitting a work to the Review constitutes the author's undertaking to this effect.

The following are not regarded as prior publication. The author discloses them at submission:

• Conference or symposium presentations whose full text has not been published
• Preprints shared on a non-commercial preprint server (e.g. SSRN, Zenodo)
• Works derived from a defended thesis. The relationship with the thesis is stated on the title page.

An author may have no more than one work under review at any time. No more than one work by the same author is published in an issue.

The views in works published in the Review, and responsibility for them, belong to the authors.

7. Institutional balance and works by board members

The number of works by authors from the same institution published in an issue may not exceed fifty per cent of the works in that issue.

Research articles authored by members of the editorial board, members of the advisory board and reviewers serving the Review may not exceed twenty-five per cent of the research articles in an issue.

An accepted work that cannot be included in an issue because of these limits may be published in a later issue with the author's consent.

Works by editors and board members are reviewed through an independent process in which the person concerned takes no part at any stage. Another editor handles the editorial duties for these works.

8. Language of publication

Works may be written in Turkish or English. Each work includes a title, abstract and keywords in both Turkish and English.

Article types, word limits and reference limits are set out on the Submission page. An extended abstract is not required.

9. Submission channel and files

Works are submitted only through the Review's online submission system. Works sent by email are not considered.

Works are uploaded in Microsoft Word (.docx) format. The Author Declaration and License Form is signed by all authors and uploaded as a PDF. Secure electronic signatures are accepted.

Authors are deemed to accept that their works, as submitted to the Review, comply with the author guidelines and are ready for publication. Works found at initial screening not to meet scholarly standards, the publication principles or the author guidelines are returned to the author.

10. Review

Academic articles are reviewed through double-blind peer review after an initial screening. At least two reviewers are assigned to each article. Reviewers are chosen from different institutions, and at least one reviewer is from outside the author's institution. The identities of authors and reviewers are kept confidential throughout the process.

• Works receiving positive reports from both reviewers are accepted for publication.
• Works that both reviewers recommend rejecting are rejected.
• If one reviewer recommends rejection, the work may be rejected by decision of the editorial board or sent to a third reviewer.
• If a reviewer report requests revisions, the author may make changes only within the scope of the requested revisions. If the reviewer report so states, the revised work is sent back to the reviewer.

Student Forum papers are read blind by one assessor, appear in the monthly bulletin and are not counted as peer-reviewed articles. The rules are on the Student Forum page.

Details are on the Review Process page.

11. Changes to authorship

As a rule, adding or removing authors and changing the order of authors are not accepted once the review process has begun.

Where a change is unavoidable, a request with reasons is sent to the editor in writing. The editorial board decides on the request in line with COPE principles, after obtaining the written consent of all authors.

12. Appeals and complaints

Authors may appeal editorial decisions, and anyone may raise a complaint about the Review's processes, by writing with reasons to the Editor-in-Chief at teknoloji@kulular.com. Appeals and complaints are handled in line with COPE guidance, and the outcome is communicated in writing. If the matter concerns the Editor-in-Chief, a member of the editorial board with no involvement in the case reviews it.

13. Expression of concern, correction and retraction policy

Where an error or a suspected ethical breach is found in a published work, the matter is handled following the COPE Retraction Guidelines and the Elsevier policy on correction, retraction and removal.

• Correction: A correction notice is published for errors that do not affect the findings and conclusions. The notice is linked to the work.
• Expression of concern: Published to alert readers while an investigation is ongoing or where no firm conclusion can be reached.
• Retraction: The work is retracted in cases of serious error invalidating the findings or conclusions, plagiarism, data fabrication or another serious ethical breach.

A retracted work is not deleted. The page and PDF file of the work remain available, marked "retracted". The retraction notice states the reasons and the date.

In exceptional cases such as unlawfulness, infringement of personality rights or a personal data breach, the work may be removed from publication. In that case, the bibliographic details of the work and the reasons for removal remain published.

14. Archiving and digital preservation policy

The Review regards the preservation and permanent accessibility of all published works as an integral part of its publishing activity.

After publication of the first issue and assignment of an e-ISSN, the Review will join the PKP Preservation Network. This network uses the LOCKSS infrastructure and stores copies of published works in a distributed manner.

All issues of the Review are also backed up daily in a repository independent of the server.

15. Revenue policy

All publication costs of the Review are covered by the publisher, Kulular Bilişim Teknolojileri Limited Şirketi. The Review has no other source of revenue.

The Review's sources of revenue and financial structure do not affect editorial decision-making at any stage.

16. Artificial intelligence policy

For authors:

• Artificial intelligence tools may not be listed as authors or counted among the authors.
• Artificial intelligence may be used for tasks that do not affect the originality of the work, such as literature searches, language checking and formatting.
• Where generative artificial intelligence has been used, the name and version of the tool, and the stage and purpose of its use, are declared in the Author Declaration and License Form.
• Artificial intelligence may not be used to fabricate data, fabricate sources, generate images or manipulate data.
• The authors alone are responsible for the scholarly content of the work, the accuracy of citations and the originality of the text.

For reviewers:

• Reviewers may not upload works submitted for their review, or any part of them, to any artificial intelligence tool. This prohibition follows from the duty of confidentiality and the need to protect the double-blind review procedure.
• The reviewer report reflects the reviewer's own scholarly assessment.

For editors:

• Editors may not upload works under review to artificial intelligence tools, and may not delegate decisions on the acceptance or rejection of a work to artificial intelligence systems.

17. Editorial independence

The relationship between the editor and the publisher rests on the principle of editorial independence. All decisions on the acceptance or rejection of works are made by the editorial board on scholarly criteria. The publisher's commercial activities and interests do not affect these decisions.

A declaration of conflict of interest is mandatory for works relating to the publisher's products, projects or activities. Editors with ties to the publisher take no part in the review of these works.

18. Protection of personal data

Personal data sent to the Review are processed in accordance with the Turkish Personal Data Protection Law (KVKK) Privacy Notice. Data relating to authors, reviewers and other natural persons are not shared with third parties or institutions except where publication processes require it.

19. Protection of intellectual property rights

The Review monitors compliance with the licence terms of published works. Where use contrary to the licence is found, the Review makes the necessary notifications in cooperation with the authors.

20. Special issues

By decision of the editorial board, the Review may publish no more than one special issue a year. The publication and review principles of regular issues apply in full to special issues.

A call for a special issue is announced with its topic, guest editors and submission deadline. Works by guest editors are reviewed through the regular process, in which the guest editor takes no part.

21. Complaints

Complaints are handled under the procedure in section 12.

22. Monitoring duty of the boards

The editorial board ensures that the author guidelines and the ethical principles and standards adopted in the publication principles remain clear and up to date. It announces changes to all stakeholders, in particular authors and reviewers.

23. Amendment procedure

The author guidelines are amended by decision of the editorial board. The publication principles are amended by decision of the editorial board after consulting the advisory board. Amendments concerning the licence and publishing services also require the written approval of the publisher before they enter into force.

Amendments are published on this page with their effective date. Works submitted before the effective date remain subject to the previous provisions, unless the new provisions are more favourable to the author.

By submitting their works to the Review, authors are deemed to accept these publication principles.