Ethics Approval and Informed Consent

Research involving human participants 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 (including research conducted online)
Oral history, life history and ethnographic field research
Research conducted in schools or with students or children
Art, music and design research involving participants (e.g. audience, listener or user studies)
Retrospective studies of current records, files or institutional archives that contain personal data (e.g. student or staff records)

Studies that do not require ethics approval

Theoretical, conceptual and historical studies
Studies based on published sources, publicly available documents and historical archival records
Analyses of literary, artistic, musical, cinematic and design works
Review articles, systematic reviews and meta-analyses
Secondary analyses of publicly available datasets that have been anonymised so that individuals cannot be identified, and of official statistics

Where ethics approval is not required, the reason is given in the Ethics Approval statement at the end of the article. Example: “This study is based on published sources and publicly available archival documents and therefore did not require ethics approval.”

For studies that analyse publicly available online content (e.g. social media posts), or where it is unclear whether approval is needed, authors seek the opinion of the ethics committee at their institution and report it in the article. Users’ identities are concealed in quotations.

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 and in the Ethics Approval statement at the end of the article; at publication this information is also shown on the first page of the article. During double-blind 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 and is not sent to reviewers.

Example: “The study was approved by the Social Sciences and Humanities 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; where the ethics committee approves it, recorded oral consent is also accepted.
For participants under 18, consent is obtained from a parent or legal guardian, together with the assent of the child.
Separate permission is obtained from participants for the publication of interview recordings, photographs and video footage. A participant’s real name is used only at their own request and with their written permission.
In designs involving deception, the justification is submitted to the ethics committee and participants are debriefed at the end of the study.

Institutional permissions and permissions to use material

Articles state that the necessary permissions were obtained from the institutions where the research was conducted (e.g. the Ministry of National Education, schools, municipalities, workplaces).
Articles state that permission was obtained from the owners of scales, questionnaires, tests, photographs or visual materials belonging to others; copyrighted test items are not reproduced in the article.
Articles state that the use of intellectual and artistic works complies with Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works; the source and rights holder of images of works are given.
Images and documents obtained from museums, libraries and archives are published in accordance with the conditions of the institution concerned, and the source is cited.
Studies that include unpublished finds from excavations or surveys state the permission of the excavation or survey director who holds the right to publish them.

Personal data and confidentiality

Personal data are processed in accordance with the Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698. Unless a participant has given explicit permission, articles and shared datasets contain no information that could identify them; pseudonyms or codes 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.