Research involving human participants or animals must have ethics approval before it begins. Approval obtained after data collection (retrospective approval) is not accepted.
Studies that require ethics approval
- Quantitative and qualitative research that collects data from participants through questionnaires, scales, interviews, focus groups, observation, experiments or similar techniques
- Research in which humans or animals are used for experimental or other scientific purposes
- Clinical research on humans
- Research on animals (approval of a Local Ethics Committee for Animal Experiments)
- Retrospective studies of records, files or archives that contain personal data
Studies that do not require ethics approval
- Theoretical and discussion papers
- Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
- Secondary analyses of publicly available datasets that have been anonymized so that individuals cannot be identified
Where ethics approval is not required, the reason is stated in the Method section.
How to report approval in the article
The name of the ethics committee and the date and number of its decision are given in the Method section; at publication this information is also shown on the first page of the article. During double-anonymous review, the name of the committee's institution is masked in the main text and given on the Title Page and Author Declaration Form. The approval document is uploaded with the submission.
Example: "The study was approved by the Social and Human Sciences Ethics Committee of X University (Date: 12 March 2025, Decision No: 2025/45)."
Informed consent
- Participants give written or electronic consent after being informed of the purpose and procedure of the study, possible risks, the voluntary nature of participation and their right to withdraw.
- For participants under 18, consent is obtained from a parent or legal guardian, together with the assent of the child.
- In designs involving deception, the justification is submitted to the ethics committee and participants are debriefed at the end of the study.
- Case reports state that signed informed consent for publication was obtained from the patient or their legal representative; identifying details are removed or altered.
Institutional and scale permissions
- Articles state that the necessary permissions were obtained from the institutions where the research was conducted (e.g., the Ministry of National Education, hospitals, workplaces).
- Articles state that permission was obtained from the owners of scales, questionnaires, tests or visual materials belonging to others; copyrighted test items are not reproduced in the article.
Personal data and confidentiality
Personal data are processed in accordance with the Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698. Articles and shared datasets contain no information that could identify participants; pseudonyms are used in qualitative excerpts.
Work based on theses
Articles derived from graduate theses give the details of the thesis and of the ethics approval obtained for the thesis research.