The journal “AQUATIC RESEARCH” is an international, scientific, open access journal published in accordance with the principles of independent, impartial and double-blind refereeing. The journal is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October to contribute to the literature by publishing articles at the highest scientific level in all fields of aquatic sciences. The publication language of the journal is English or Turkish, and it has been published since 2018.

     The journal publishes original research and review articles prepared in accordance with ethical rules.

The publication of the "AQUATIC RESEARCH" journal are not limited to these; Aquatic Biology, Aquatic Ecology, Aquatic Environment and Pollutants, Aquaculture, Conservation and Management of Aquatic Source, Economics and Managements of Fisheries, Fish Diseases and Health, Fisheries Resources and Management, Genetics of Aquatic Organisms, Limnology, Maritime Sciences, Marine Accidents, Marine Navigation and Safety, Marine and Coastal Ecology, Oceanography, Seafood Processing and Quality Control, Seafood Safety Systems, Sustainability in Marine and Freshwater Systems etc. covers topics. The target audience of the journal consists of experts and professionals working and interested in all disciplines of aquatic sciences.

The editorial and publication processes of the journal are the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), Council of Science Editors (CSE), Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), European Association of Science Editors (EASE), Open Access Scholarly and Publishers Association (OASPA), and Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) guidelines. "AQUATIC RESEARCH" journal also complies with the "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing" (https://doaj.org/apply/transparency/ and https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing).

Processing and publication are free of charge with the journal. There is no article processing charges or submission fees for any submitted or accepted articles. Statements or opinions expressed in articles published in the journal reflect the views of the author(s), not the views of the editors, editorial board and/or publisher; The editors, editorial board, and publisher do not accept any responsibility or liability for such materials.

To guarantee that all papers published in the journal are maintained and permanently accessible, articles are stored in Dergipark (https://dergipark.org.tr) which serves as a national archival web site and at the same time permits LOCKSS to collect, preserve, and serve the content. All expenses of the journal are covered by the ScientificWebJournals web portal.

In addition, authors are encouraged to self-archive the final PDF version of their articles in open electronic archives that comply with Open Archive Initiative (https://www.openarchives.org/) standards. Authors should provide a link from the stored version to the journal website URL.

Editor in Chief: Prof. Dr. Özkan Özden

Address: Istanbul University Faculty of Aquatic Sciences, Kalenderhane Mah. 16 Mart Şehitleri Cad. No:2 34134 Vezneciler Fatih/Istanbul, Türkiye

E-mail: ozden@istanbul.edu.tr 

Header photos (web and others) from Ferhan Coşkun, Türkiye

E.mail: fcoskun@gmail.com

Instagram: instagram.com/exultsoul

Journal Responsibilities

The "AQUATIC RESEARCH" journal is committed to preventing publication malpractice. Submitted works must represent original contributions free from plagiarism. Authors must disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest. The journal ensures objective and fair double-blind peer-review to prevent conflicts between editorial staff, reviewers, and authors

The journal provides an open platform for public discussion requiring registration for accountability. Reviewer identities remain confidential unless explicitly disclosed to the editors.

Publication Decisions

The editor of the "AQUATIC RESEARCH" journals is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

The journal submission and publication process involves manuscript submission, ethical checks, double-blind peer review, editorial decision-making (including potential conflict resolution), typesetting, author review, DOI assignment, online publication, and archiving, as detailed in the workflow diagram below.

Fair Play

An editor at any time evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regarding race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Confidentiality

The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.

Research Ethics

An approval of research protocols by the Ethics Committee in accordance with international agreements (World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects,” amended in October 2013, www.wma.net) is required for experimental, clinical, and drug studies. If required, ethics committee reports or an equivalent official document will be requested from the authors.

For manuscripts concerning experimental research on humans, a statement should be included that shows the written informed consent of patients and volunteers was obtained following a detailed explanation of the procedures that they may undergo. Information on patient consent, the name of the ethics committee, and the ethics committee approval number should also be stated in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript. It is the authors’ responsibility to carefully protect the patients’ anonymity. For photographs that may reveal the identity of the patients, signed releases of the patient or of their legal representative should be enclosed.

“AQUATIC RESEARCH” journal requires experimental research studies on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates to comply with relevant institutional, national and/or international guidelines. The journal supports the principles of the Basel Declaration (https://animalresearchtomorrow.org/en) and the guidelines published by the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) (https://iclas.org/). Authors are advised to clearly state their compliance with relevant guidelines.

This journal advises authors to comply with IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora for research involving plants.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

Our journal adheres to international standards of publication ethics and requires complete transparency regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.) during manuscript preparation.

Disclosure Requirement: Authors must disclose the use of any AI tool in the manuscript, specifying the name of the tool, the stage(s) at which it was used, and its purpose. This text should be included in the "Disclosure". Authors must affirm that all scientific content is their own and that they retain full responsibility for any material generated with the assistance of AI tools.

Content Limitation: The use of AI tools must remain supplementary. If the proportion of AI-generated text content exceeds 20% of the total manuscript, the submission will be considered ineligible for review and rejected on ethical grounds.

Responsibility: AI tools cannot be listed as authors. All named authors are solely accountable for the content of the submission, including any material produced with AI assistance. Failure to disclose the use of AI tools or excessive reliance on them will be considered a breach of publication ethics.

Plagiarism

Submitted manuscripts that pass preflight are scanned for plagiarism using iThenticate software. Authors will be notified if plagiarism/self-plagiarism is detected. Editors can resubmit the article for any peer-review or similarity check during production, if necessary. High similarity scores can cause an article to be rejected before or even after it is accepted. Depending on the type of article and the percentage of similarity scores from each article, the overall similarity score is generally expected to be less than 20%.

Double-Blind Referee Evaluation

After the plagiarism check, the appropriate ones are evaluated by the editors in terms of originality, methodology, importance of the subject and suitability to the scope of the journal. The editor directs the submitted articles to a fair double-blind peer-review (submits the articles that comply with official rules to at least two national/international referees for evaluation) and gives approval by managing the processes for publication after they are modified by the authors in accordance with the referees' rules.

Open Access Statement

The journal is an open access journal and all its content is freely available to the user or institution. Users are permitted to read, download, copy, print, search or link the full texts of articles in this journal without prior permission from the publisher or author. This conforms to Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) 's definition of open access.

Open access articles in the journal are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Article Processing Fee

All journal processes are free of charge. No article processing fee, submission fee or publication fee is charged for submitted or accepted articles.

Copyright Notice

Authors publishing with the journal retain copyright to their work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), and Publisher retains the exclusive right to publish the work. The CC BY 4.0 license permits unlimited distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

The copyright of any open access article in the "AQUATIC RESEARCH" journal published on the "ScientificWebJournals" web portal hosted by "DergiPark" belongs to the author(s).

Correction, Withdrawal, Expression of Concern

If minor errors are detected that do not affect the results, comments and conclusions of the published article, the editor accepts the correction. If major errors and/or abuses are detected by the editor, which invalidates the results and conclusions, their withdrawal is considered.
If there is evidence of research or publication abuse by the authors, there is evidence that the findings are unreliable and that the authors' institutions did not investigate the incident, or the potential investigation seems unfair or inconclusive. The editor should consider issuing a statement of concern.
COPE and ICJME guidelines are considered regarding correction, withdrawal or expression of concern.

Archiving Policy

To preserve and permanently access all articles published in the journal "Aquatic Research", the papers are nationally archived under the name Dergipark (https://dergipark.org) by TÜBİTAK Turkish Academic Network and Information Center (ULAKBİM) affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Technology of Türkiye. It is stored with a system established for journal publishing activities that allow LOCKSS to collect, preserve and present the content.

Additionally, authors are encouraged to self-archive the final PDF version of their articles in open electronic archives with that conform to standards of Open Archives Initiative (https://www.openarchives.org/). Authors should provide a link from the deposited version to the URL of journal website.