Writing Rules

General Principles

The ISPEC International Journal of Social and Humanities publishes original research articles conducted in the fields of social and humanities sciences, as well as review articles that explain significant scientific and technological innovations and methods. The publication languages of the journal are Turkish and English. For manuscripts written in Turkish, the latest spelling guide and Turkish dictionary published by the Turkish Language Association are taken as the basis. For manuscripts written in English, it is recommended that the author(s) have the text reviewed linguistically by a language specialist before submission.

Manuscripts submitted for publication must not have been previously published or granted publication rights elsewhere. All works must be prepared in accordance with scientific ethics. For studies requiring Ethics Committee approval, a copy of the Ethics Committee Report must be submitted together with the manuscript. All responsibility for the articles published in the journal belongs to the author(s).

Submitted manuscripts are sent to reviewers according to their content and the reviewers’ areas of expertise. The section editor reviewing the manuscript proposes at least two reviewers from the ISPEC International Journal of Social and Humanities reviewer pool based on their expertise, or may recommend new reviewers appropriate to the field of the study. Care is taken to ensure that reviewers are from different institutions and are not affiliated with the same institution as the author(s). Reviewer recommendations submitted by the section editor are evaluated by the editors, and manuscripts are then forwarded to the reviewers. Reviewers are required to guarantee that they will not share any process or document related to the manuscripts they evaluate.

Preprints of accepted manuscripts are sent to the corresponding author, who must check them for printing errors and return them within a short period of time. After a manuscript has been accepted for publication, no changes may be made to the manuscript text, author names, or author order.

All authors listed in the manuscript must sign the Copyright Transfer Form declaring that they have transferred the publication rights to the ISPEC International Journal of Social and Humanities.

Manuscript Preparation Format

The manuscript text must be prepared on A4-sized paper, single-sided, using Times New Roman font, 12-point size (including all headings), and single line spacing. Page margins must be 2.5 cm from the top, bottom, left, and right. Paragraph indentation within the manuscript text must be 1 cm.

The manuscript should consist of the following main sections: Turkish Title, Turkish Abstract, Keywords, English Title, English Abstract, Keywords, 1. Introduction, 2. Materials and Methods, 3. Results and Discussion, 4. Conclusions, Author Contributions Statement (if any), Conflict of Interest Statement (if any), Funding (if any), Ethics Committee Approval (if any), Acknowledgment (if any), References, Figures, and Tables. Depending on the narrative structure of the manuscript, the “Discussion” section may be presented as a separate main section apart from “Results.” In manuscripts written in Turkish, the Turkish abstract should be presented first, followed by the English abstract; in manuscripts written in English, only an English abstract should be provided.

All main section headings and subheadings, if any, must be written in bold without paragraph indentation, and all words in subheadings must be written in lowercase letters.

In the manuscript text uploaded to the system, no author-identifying information such as names, affiliations, or contact details should be included (Templates and Forms).

The manuscript, including the “References” section, must not exceed 24 pages. Author(s) may use the Manuscript Preparation Template available on the journal’s website when preparing these sections.

Accordingly, the manuscript text should be prepared in the following order:

Title of the Manuscript

The title should be short, concise, and appropriate to the manuscript content. The first letter of each word should be capitalized, and the title should be written in bold and centered. The English title must fully correspond to the Turkish title.

Abstract

The terms “Özet” and “Abstract” should be used for the Turkish and English abstracts, respectively. The abstract should be concise, comprehensive, and emphasize why the study was conducted, what was done, how it was done, what was found, and what these findings mean. Each of the Turkish and English abstracts must not exceed 200 words. No literature citations should be included in this section. The Abstract sections should be presented one line below the Turkish and English titles, respectively, without paragraph indentation.

Keywords

One line below the Turkish and English abstracts, the terms “Anahtar Kelimeler” and “Keywords” should be written respectively. All keywords should be written in lowercase letters (except proper nouns), preferably not used in the title, and a maximum of six keywords that best describe the study should be provided.

1. Introduction

This section should explain the content and rationale of the study using relevant literature, clearly presenting the aim of the study and the hypothesis to be tested.

2. Materials and Methods

Materials and methods should be presented under the same heading. If subheadings are used, they should be numbered together with the section number (e.g., 2.1., 2.2.). The materials used and especially new or modified methods should be described in sufficient detail to allow replication by other researchers. However, if methods have been previously published, detailed explanations should be avoided and appropriate references should be cited. Appropriate statistical methods should be used and explained to test the hypothesis. Measures of variability such as standard error or standard deviation should be provided when necessary.

3. Results and Discussion

The results obtained should be explained in this section and supported, where necessary, by tables, figures, and graphs. Data presented in tables should not be repeated in the text or figures. However, important data shown in figures should also be mentioned in the text. If the statistical analysis method is incorrectly chosen and/or not properly applied, Statistical Editors may exclude the manuscript from evaluation. In the discussion, the significance of the results and their contribution to science and practice should be discussed, evaluated, or interpreted using relevant literature.

4. Conclusions

The contribution of the results to science and practice, as well as any recommendations, should be presented concisely. Statements provided in the Introduction and Results and Discussion sections should not be repeated verbatim in this section.

Author Contributions Statement

The contributions of the authors should be stated. For example: The authors declare that they contributed equally to the manuscript and that they have seen/read and approved the final version ready for publication.

Conflict of Interest Statement

All authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding this study.

Funding

This study was supported by the Scientific Research Projects (BAP) Coordination Unit of Sivas University of Science and Technology Rectorate under project number “2016.10.07.1091” and by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) under project number “120O576.”

Ethics Committee Approval

For studies requiring ethics committee approval, information regarding the approval (committee name, date, and approval number) must be provided in the methods section and also on the first/last page of the manuscript.

For case reports, it is mandatory to state in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained and signed.

Acknowledgment

This study was derived from the first author’s master’s/doctoral thesis.

References

In-text citations in the manuscript should follow these rules:

In manuscripts written in Turkish, regardless of the language of the cited source, “and” or “et al.” should not be used in citations. In manuscripts written in English, regardless of the language of the cited source, “ve” or “ve ark.” should not be used.

Sources such as progress reports, project final reports, project proposals, theses that are not publicly accessible, and non-scientific internet sources should not be cited.

Citations should be made in the text using the “(Author’s surname–year)” format:
Examples: (Çilesiz, 2022), (Çilesiz and Seydoşoğlu, 2023), (Çilesiz et al., 2018);
In manuscripts written in English: (Çilesiz, 2010), (Çilesiz and Seydoşoğlu, 2023), (Çilesiz et al., 2018).

When the author’s name is mentioned in the text, only the year of publication should be placed in parentheses:
Examples: According to Çığ (2010)…; Çilesiz and Seydoşoğlu (2013); Çilesiz et al. (2018).
In manuscripts written in English: Çilesiz and Seydoşoğlu (2013); Çilesiz et al. (2018).

If more than one source by the same author published in the same year is cited, letters such as a, b, c should be added after the year:
Examples: (Çilesiz et al., 2011a) or (Çilesiz et al., 2011a, 2011b).

If multiple publications by the same author are cited, they should be separated by commas after the year:
Example: (Çilesiz, 2010, 2012, 2013).

If multiple citations from different authors are used, they should be separated by semicolons and listed in chronological order:
Examples: (Çilesiz et al., 2016; Seydoşoğlu et al., 2018; Turan, 2019, 2020; Çığ and Seydoşoğlu, 2022) /
(Çilesiz et al., 2016; Seydoşoğlu et al., 2018; Turan, 2019, 2020; Çığ and Seydoşoğlu, 2022).

For different authors with the same publication year, alphabetical order should be followed:
Example: (Aydın, 2022; Çilesiz and Karaköy, 2022; Özyazıcı et al., 2022).

Figures and Tables

All figures, graphs, images, photographs, maps, and similar materials included in the manuscript should be referred to as “Figure”, and tables, charts, and schedules should be referred to as “Table”, and must be written in bold. All figures and tables should be placed at the end of the manuscript in numerical order. Figures should be sized appropriately for printing, and images must have a resolution of 600 dpi.

Each figure and table must be cited within the text and numbered consecutively (e.g., Figure 1, Figure 2, or Table 1, Table 2). Figure and table titles, as well as explanations within each cell, should be concise and clear.

Figure and table titles should be written in 11-point font, and the text inside figures and tables should be written in 9-point font. All abbreviations used in tables and figures, as well as explanations required for statistical analyses, should be explained immediately below the table/figure in 7-point footnotes, and each abbreviation explanation should be separated by a comma (,). No period (.) should be placed at the end of figure and table titles or footnotes (See manuscript preparation template).

Abbreviations and/or Symbols

The use of abbreviations in manuscripts should be avoided as much as possible. Symbols should be presented as specified in the Manuscript Preparation Template. If abbreviations are to be used in the text, the full term should be written at the first occurrence, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses [Example: phosphorus (P)]. The same rule applies to symbols. Internationally accepted and commonly used abbreviations should be preferred.

Abbreviations should not be used in the manuscript title. Symbols should be given according to the SI system.

Formulas

Formulas should be numbered, and the formula number should be shown in parentheses aligned to the right of the formula.

Formulas should be written using the Word equation editor. Main characters should be 10-point font, variables should be italicized, and numbers and mathematical expressions should be written in upright font. When referring to formulas in the text, they should be cited as “Equation 1” (e.g., “…the related model is given in Equation 1”).

Supplementary Files

In addition to the manuscript text, the following documents and files available on the journal’s website must also be prepared and uploaded to the system during submission:

• A Title Page in Word format containing the author(s)’ full names, institutional affiliations, and the corresponding author’s contact information,

• A Copyright Transfer Form signed by all authors and scanned in PDF format,

• An Ethics Committee Report, if required.

In the event that the manuscript is accepted for publication, the original Copyright Transfer Form must be sent to the editor by post.

Manuscript Submission

The prepared manuscript and related supplementary files must be uploaded electronically only by the corresponding author (who is responsible for all correspondence from the beginning of the publication process through post-publication) via the “Submit Manuscript” section on the ISPEC International Journal of Social and Humanities website
(https://ispecjournal.org/index.php/ispecijssh/about/submissions).

Authors can track the progress of their manuscripts through the journal’s website. Authors who are unable to complete the manuscript submission steps may request assistance by sending an email to the journal’s email address (submission@ispecjournal.com).

NOTE

THE JOURNAL’S AUTHOR GUIDELINES WERE UPDATED ON 01.01.2025.