Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

The fundamental aim of the journal is to expand the research concerning early childhood education, to make these period and relevant studies visible, and to reveal the specific needs of childhood by taking into consideration of high benefit of children.

Journal of Early Childhood Studies will include interdisciplinary qualitative and quantitative studies relevant to early childhood period. Moreover, it will comprise review studies, theoretical studies and book presentation concerning child studies. Also, for every volume a special issue is planned to publish teacher and student practice studies based on the editorial board decision.

Section Policies

Research Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Review Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

5.International Early Childhood Education Congress

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Opinion Papers

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

All manuscripts submitted for publication should be original. Manuscripts published or under consideration for publication elsewhere should not be submitted and will not be considered. Submission of a paper implies that it has not been published previously, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that if accepted it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.

Manuscripts submitted to the journal management system is evaluated by the editors and field editors within two weeks at the latest. The manuscripts are critically evaluated basing on the journal’s submission criteria:

scope of the journal and appropriateness to the field of study
evaluation of the similarity
appropriateness to the writing rules
Publication language (APA 6 rules )

Manuscripts passed from pre-assessment of editors and fields editors are forwarded to two referees who are specialized in the field concerned.

These referees state their decision whether they take the submitted manuscript into evaluation or not to the publication board within two weeks at the latest. If the referees don’t state an opinion to the publication board, new referees are assigned for the reviewing the manuscript.

The assigned referees evaluate the study by using standard manuscript evaluation form. Moreover the assigned referees may also present their views and thoughts in the full paper and send it to the publication board. Evaluation of journal reviewers takes 4 weeks.

Views of the referees serve as a guide to editors and field editors to make final decision. Final decision always belongs to editors and field editors.

Referees can state the following four views for the submitted manuscript:

Acceptance for publication
Acceptance for publication after minor revision (it is decided after revisions are checked by the editorial board)
Reviewing again after the major revision is done. After revision is made by the writers of the study, it is evaluated for the second tour.
It is not published (rejection)

Based on the views of referees third or fourth referees can be assigned. In such case, the same process of evaluation will be performed.

After reviewers’ evaluation is completed, views of the referees are examined at least two weeks by editors and field editors.

Editors and field editors give final decision for the manuscript by taking into consideration of views and suggestions of referees. The final decision is sent to the author.

Open Access Policy

Journal of Early Childhood Studies, adheres to the Budapest Open Access Initiative and defines its Open Access policy according to the definition developed in the original BOAI.

Journal of Early Childhood Studies aims to promote the development of global Open Access to scientific information and research. The Publisher provides copyrights of all online published papers (except where otherwise noted) for free use of readers, scientists, and institutions (such as link to the content or permission for its download, distribution, printing, copying, and reproduction in any medium, except change of contents and for commercial use), under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported (CC BY-NC) License, provided the original work is cited. Written permission is required from the editorial board for use of its contents for commercial purposes.

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The publication process at Journal of Early Childhood Studies is the basis of the improvement and dissemination of information objectively and respectfully. Therefore, the procedures in this process improves the quality of the studies.

Peer-reviewed studies are the ones that support and materialize the scientific method. At this point, it is of utmost importance that all parties included in the publication process (authors, readers and researchers, publisher, reviewers and editors) comply with the standards of ethical considerations. Journal of Early Childhood Studies expects all parties to hold the following ethical responsibilities.

Ethical duties and responsibilities are written in the light of the guide and policies made by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Responsibilities of Editors

The editor and field editors of Journal of Early Childhood Studies should hold the following ethical responsibilities that are based on the guides "COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" and "COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors" published as open Access byCommittee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

General duties and responsibilities

Editors are responsible for each study published in Journal of Early Childhood Studies. In this respect, the editors have the following roles and responsibilities:

Making efforts to meet the demand for knowledge from readers and authors,
Ensuring the continuous development of the journal,
Managing the procedures aimed to improve the quality of the studies published in the journal,
Supporting freedom of expression,
Ensuring academic integrity,
Following the procedures without making concessions on intellectual property rights and ethical standards,
Being transparent and clear in issues that require correction or explanation.

Relationships with Readers

Editors must make decisions taking into consideration the knowledge, skills and expectations of all readers, researchers and practitioners need. They must also ensure that the published studies contribute to literature and be original. Moreover, they must take notice of the feedback received from researchers and practitioners and provide explanatory and informative feedback.

Relationships with Authors

Editors have the following duties and responsibilities in their relations with authors:

Editors must make positive or negative decisions about the studies' importance, originality, validity, clarity in wording and suitability with the journal's aims and objectives.
Editors must accept the studies that are within the scope of publication into pre review process unless there are serious problems with the study.
Editors must not ignore positive suggestions made by reviewers unless there are serious problems with the study.
New editors, unless there are serious issues, must not change the previous editor's decisions about the studies.
Blind Review and Review Process must be published and editors must prevent possible diversions in the defined processes.
Editors must publish an Author's Guide that is comprehensive enough in answering queries by authors. This guide must be updated regularly.
Authors should be provided with explanatory and informative feedback.

Relationships with Reviewers

Editors have the following duties and responsibilities in their relations with reviewers:

Editors must

choose reviewers according to the subject of the study.
provide the information and guidance reviewers may need during the review process.
observe whether there are conflicting interests between reviewers and authors.
keep the identities of reviewers confidential in blind review.
encourage the reviewers to review the manuscript in an unbiased, scientific and objective tone.
evaluate reviewers regularly based on criteria like performance and timing.
develop practices and policies that increase the performance of reviewers.
take necessary steps to update the reviewer pool dynamically.
prevent unkind and unscientific reviews.
make effort to ensure the reviewer pool has a wide range.

Relationships with the Editorial Advisory Board

Editors must make sure that the members of the Editorial Advisory Board follow the procedures in accordance with the publication policies and guidelines, and must inform the members about the publication policies and developments. The editors must also train new members of the Editorial Advisory Board and provide the information they need.

Moreover, editors must

ensure that the members of the Editorial Advisory Board review the manuscripts in an unbiased and independent manner.
select the new members of the Editorial Advisory Board from those who can contribute to the journal and are qualified enough.
send manuscripts for review based on the subject of expertise of the Editorial Advisory Board.
regularly communicate with the Editorial Advisory Board.
arrange regular meetings with the Editorial Advisory Board for the development of publication policies and the journal.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

The authors who submit their manuscripts to Journal of Early Childhood Studies are expected to comply with the following ethical responsibilities:

Author(s) must submit original studies to the journal. If they utilize or use other studies, they must make the in-text and end-text references accurately and completely.
People who have not contributed to the study at the intellectual level should not be indicated as author.
If the manuscripts submitted to be published are subject of conflicting interests or relations, these must be explained.
During the review process of their manuscripts, author(s) may be asked to supply raw data. In such a case, author(s) should be ready to submit such data and information to the editorial and scientific boards.
Author(s) should document that they have the participants' consent and the necessary permissions related with the sharing and research/analysis of the data that are used.
Author(s) bears the responsibility to inform the editor of the journal or publisher if they happen to notice a mistake in their study which is in early release or publication process and to cooperate with the editors during the correction or withdrawal process.
Authors cannot submit their studies to multiple journals simultaneously. Each submission can be made only after the previous one is completed. A study published in another journal cannot be submitted to Journal of Early Childhood Studies.
Author responsibilities given in a study (e.g.: adding an author, reordering of author names) whose review process has begun cannot be changed.

Conflicts-of-Interest Statement

Authors

According to general publication policy of the Journal of Early Childhood Studies, only the researchers who contributed to the work in a real sense should be considered as an author. Authors should be responsible to disclose all the personal and financial relationships which might bias their work. Financial relationships such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony can be classified as the most easily identifiable conflicts-of-interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal. To clarify conflicts-of-interest issue, authors must submit a letter to the editorial office accompanying the submitted manuscript and explicitly state if any potential conflicts exist or not.

Peer Reviewers

Peer Reviewers should be responsible to decline the review process if any substantial conflicts-of-interest exists. In case of any doubt, they should consult to the Editor to make a decision regarding the review process. Researchers from authors' institutions should not be considered as peer reviewers to prevent any conflicts-of-interest.

Editors

Editors should be responsible to manage the review process and have the right of declining any submission in case of any conflict-of-interest. They should not have any direct personal and/or financial conflicts with their assigned manuscripts. They should not be assigned to manuscripts if they are in the author list of them.

Plagiarism Control

All the submitted articles to Journal of Early Childhood Studies are evaluated by using the plagiarism detection software. After evaluating the generated similarity report, the editorial board decides to proceed the submission to the review or directly decline it.

However, manuscripts based on papers published at related conferences and workshops proceedings may be submitted for consideration provided that: the papers are not identical; the authors cite their earlier conference paper on which this new work is based; the journal publication includes clearly shown novel elements (e.g., more comprehensive experiments).

Complaints Policy

Complaints regarding any published materials will only be accepted within 12 months from the first publication date. In case of any complaint, the authors are required to submit their complaints along with their reasons to the editorial office via e-mail.

Publication Languages

Journal of Early Childhood Studies accepts manuscripts in Turkish and English.

The manuscripts submitted to the journal should have a plain and clear language quality and should be consistent with the scientific literature and Turkish or English language rules. Manuscripts should be written fluently and free of foreign words. Moreover, manuscripts in Turkish should include an abstract in English.

The extended abstract should include titles like introduction, aim, method, findings and discussion, and result. Length is restricted to a minimum of 750 words and a maximum of 1000 words.

During the review process for the manuscripts submitted to Journal of Early Childhood Studies, language editing may be required by the editorial board. Such manuscripts are edited by the recommended accredited language companies and the editing documents should be submitted to the editorial board. Those manuscripts that are not edited and documented will not be accepted for publication.

The companies that could help authors with their manuscripts are as follows:

Elsevier Language Services: http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices/
Editage: http://www.editage.com/
Enago: http://www.enago.com/

For more details, please see author guidelines.

Publication Frequency

Journal of Early Childhood Studies publishes two issues a year, Spring and Fall, as well as a special issue once a year to share scientific work quickly with the public.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

After completing the review process, all the accepted manuscripts are published online without requiring any manuscript submission and/or processing charges.

About the Publisher

Association for the Development of Early Childhood Education in Turkey

Association for the Development of Early Childhood Education in Turkey is a non-governmental organization founded in 10 February 1967 in order to develop preschool education in Turkey, help to educate people and make them beneficial to Turkish society and to humanity.

History

Association for the Development of Early Childhood Education is a non-governmental organization founded in 10 February 1967. On May, 5, 1970, it was declared as one of the “ Associations working for public welfare” with 7/663 decision of Council of Ministers. And on July,16, 1970, the decision was published at official gazette in issue no. 13250.

Association broke new ground in the field of preschool education by publishing “Preschool Education” journal. That journal published twice in a year between the years of 1968-1994 as total 47 volume.

Association for the Development of Early Childhood Education is working as Turkey National Committee of Early Childhood Education World Organization (Organisation Mondiale Pour L’Education Préscolaire - OMEP) since 11 September 1972.

Aim of Association for the Development of Early Childhood Education in Turkey

The aim of the association has been defined in the 2^nd Article of regulations of the association. Based on these;

Article 2:

Association strivea to reach that aim through the acts stated below:

Supports research concerning preschool children
Makes colloboration with science councils, relevant ministries and voluntary associations to guide research concerning preschool education,
Encourages parent education concerning child development and child education
Helps to build libraries and playgrounds that children can benefit from in Turkey
Supports to educate people who serves in the preschool education foundations so as to increase professional development of these people,
Organize regional and international conferences,
Makes collaboration with relevant world organizations and national foundations like “Organisation Mondiale Pour L’education Prescolaire (OMEP)” ,
Organizes cultural activities like conferences, exhibitions to serve the main goal of the association and make cooperation with mass media,
Promotes opening public and private preschools, and encourages people who are interested in preschool education to give qualified education.

The association does not have any involvement with politics.