Journal of ATA Planning and Design is a national peer-reviewed journal of Faculty of Architecture and Design of Atatürk University, and is published twice a year. Special or additional issues may be published when necessary.

Journal of ATA Planning and Design accepts articles associated with the relevant branches of Architecture, Interior Architecture, City and Regional Planning, Department of Landscape Architecture; that are in the field of theory-practice and history, together with interdisciplinary studies including planning and design, conservation and restoration, building, and building systems technology and design, industrial product design and technology; and studies of research and review aimed at theory and practice on urban, rural, and regional level and Human-Environment relations, Physical Planning and evaluating design from the perspective of theory and practice. 

Studies submitted to Journal of ATA Planning and Design are subject to a blind peer review process and published electronically with free access. The ethical responsibilities, roles and duties of authors, journal editor, reviewers and publisher are presented below. These ethical principles and rules are prepared according to the instructions of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/)

The studies submitted to Journal of ATA Planning and Design should be original researches in the related branches of Architecture, Interior Architecture, City and Regional Planning, Landscape Architecture. All sources used in articles (authors, online pages, personal interviews, etc.) must be properly and appropriately referenced.

No royalties will be paid to works that will be printed in the Journal of ATA Planning and Design. The Copyright Agreement must be signed and added to the articles that will be sent. In case of a missing signature, the responsibility rests with the author(s) who signed the agreement.

Conflicts of interest related to the submitted article should be stated together with the explanation of the reason. Author(s) are expected to share raw data about their work with the board of editors; if asked through the review process. Author(s) are supposed to keep data on a published article for 5 years. Authors should inform the editor and the editorial board when they detect an error in their work, and cooperate in the correction or withdrawal process.

The author (s) must not submit an article they have published or submitted for publication to another journal, or more than one article at once to Journal of ATA Planning and Design.

The name of people who do not contribute to the article should not be written as an author. Changing the order of the authors or removing or adding an author should not be recommended after the submission for publication.

The author(s) should contact the editor to provide information, correct or withdraw information when they notice an error in their article at the evaluation and early appearance stage or published electronically.

Author(s) should state the approval of the Ethics Committee about the quantitative or qualitative methods they use for research; which requires experiment, questionnaire, interview, observation, focus group discussions; in the methods section or on the first/last page of the article, including the name of the committee, the number and the date of the decision. The document indicating the decision of the Ethics Committee should be installed to the system at the application process. 

Ethics committee approval is not requested for the review articles. However, it should also be stated on the first/last page of the article and in the method section that the decision of the Ethics Committee is not required.

The ethical responsibilities and roles of Journal of ATA Planning and Design referees are as follows:

Referees are only required to review articles related to their area of expertise.

Referees are expected to agree to review articles that do not have conflicts of interest. Referees should inform the editor if they notice any conflict of interest and refuse to review the article.

Referees should evaluate articles impartially and objectively.

Referees are required to fill out the Electronic Referee Evaluation Form for the articles they evaluate. In this form, referees are also required to indicate their decision on whether the article they are evaluating is publishable or not, together with their rationale. 

The style that referees use in their suggestions should be polite, respectful and scientific. Referees should avoid offensive, disrespectful and subjective personal comments. Reviewers may be contacted by the editor or the editorial board to review and correct their comments if they are found to have made such unscientific comments.

Referees are required to complete their assessment within the 30-day period given to them and are expected to comply with the ethical responsibilities set out here.

Editors must comply with the ethical responsibilities listed in the ‘Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors’ and the ‘COPE Best Practice Guidelines for journal Editors’ published by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; https://publicationethics.org).

The editor is responsible for all articles printed in the journal. The ethical duties and responsibilities of the editor are as follows:

The editor is obliged to make efforts in order to increase the quality of the Journal and to contribute to its development.

The editor is required to support writers' freedom of expression.

The editor must be sure that the sections in which peer review is not required in the Journal (such as letters to the editor, invited articles, conference announcements, etc.) are clearly specified.

The editor should make efforts to ensure that the published articles are compatible with the knowledge and skills of the journal’s readers.

By appointing at least two referees, the editor should ask the referees to evaluate articles that correspond to their knowledge and expertise. In this way, articles should be provided to be reviewed appropriately by experts in their field.

The editor is obliged to require reviewers to indicate that there are no conflicts of interest about the article before reviewing process.

The editor is required to communicate to the referees about all necessary information regarding the reviewing process together with what is expected from referees.

The editor must ensure that the peer review process is maintained by blind peer review and must not disclose referees to authors and authors to referees.

The editor must evaluate the referees based on their timing and performance.

The editor must create a database of referees and update it according to the referees' performance.

The editor must remove referees who make rude and unqualified comments or return late from the list of referees.

The editor must constantly update and expand the list of referees according to the referees ' areas of expertise.

The editor must constantly update author guidelines and the sample template. 

The editor should evaluate the articles submitted to the Journal in terms of guidelines, the importance of the study and its authenticity; and if he decides to reject the article during the initial submission process, editor should clearly and impartially inform the author(s) of the reason for this. In this process, if the editor decides that it should be reviewed in terms of the grammar, punctuation and/or spelling rules of the article (margins, proper referencing, etc.), the author(s) should be informed about it and given time to make the necessary corrections

Articles should include dates of submission and acceptance for publication.

Authors should be informed of the status of their articles in a way that does not disrupt the blind peer review process when they asked for.

The editor should deliver the rules of publication and guidelines to the new members of the board of editors and explain what is expected from them.

The editor should provide the most up-to-date version of the publication and writing rules to the members of the editorial board 

The editor must evaluate the members of the editorial board and select the members to the editorial board who will actively participate in the development of the journal.

The editor should inform the members of the board of editors about the roles and responsibilities listed below:

* Support the development of the journal

* Prepare reviews related to their areas of expertise when asked

* Check and improve publication and writing rules/guidelines

* Fulfill the necessary responsibilities in the operation of the journal

Journal of ATA Planning and Design, is a national refereed journal of Architecture amd Design Faculty of Atatürk University; that is electronically published twice a year (in the months of December and June). Special or additional numbers may also be published if necessary.

All articles submitted to Journal of ATA Planning and Design are scanned using a plagiarism detection software [IThenticate (http://www.ithenticate.com/) or Turnitin (https://www.turnitin.com/)] before printing. The maximum accepted similarity rate is 30%. Articles below this rate are accepted for publication. Articles that exceed this rate are examined in detail and sent back to the authors for review or correction if deemed necessary, and their publication is refused if plagiarism or any other unethical behaviour is detected.

Below some unethical behaviours are listed:

* Indication of people who did not contribute intellectually to the study as authors.

* No notification of intellectual contributors to the study as authors.

* No notification regarding the article’s relation with the author's master's/doctoral dissertation or from a project.

* Slicing, that is, publishing more than one article from a single study.

* No notification of conflicts of interest in submitted articles.

* Deciphering the blind peer review process.