Akademik yayın hayatının 20. yılına ulaşan Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, son yıllarda ulusal ve uluslararası akademik yayıncılık alanında önemli mesafeler kat etti. 15 Aralık 2016 tarihinde yayımladığımız 19. cilt 2. sayımızdan itibaren sağlanan ilerlemeleri, siz değerli okuyucularımızla paylaşmak istiyoruz. 1996 yılından itibaren Cumhuriyet Universitesi Ilahiyat Fakultesi Dergisi [Cumhuriyet University Journal of Faculty of Theology] adıyla yayınlanan dergimizin adının çok uzun olması ve atıf tespitinde yaşanan zorluklar sebebi ile Cumhuriyet ilahiyat dergisi [Cumhuriyet theology journal] olarak değiştirilmesi kararlaştırılmıştır. Dergimiz, 20. cilt, 1. sayıdan itibaren bu adla yayın hayatına devam edecektir. Dergimiz, TÜBİTAK - ULAKBİM’in sunduğu elektronik dergi yönetim sistemi DergiPark Akademik’ın yeni versiyonunun güçlü açık erişim ve online akademik yayıncılık alt yapısını kullanabilmek amacıyla gerekli teknik çalışmaları tamamladı. Bu kapsamda 01 Haziran 2016 tarihi itibariyle yeni web sayfamız hizmete girdi.

Greetings and welcome back to Cumhuriyet University Journal of the Faculty of Theology, which reached the 20th year in the academic publication journey. Our journal has achieved great progress in the field of both national and international academic publication. We would like to share with you the achievements have been made since 19th volume 2nd issue published on 15th December 2015.Considering the length of our name that has been in use since 1996, it has been also decided to change the journal’s name Cumhuriyet Universitesi Ilahiyat Fakultesi Dergisi [Cumhuriyet University Journal of Faculty of Theology] to Cumhuriyet ilahiyat dergisi [Cumhuriyet theology journal] in order to provide convenience for readers to cite articles. From 20th volume/1st isseu on, our journal will contuine the academic journey with its new name.Our Journal has completed all the technical requirements to use the new and open access online system of DergiPark Akademik, which is an electronic system to organize a journal that TUBITAK-ULAKBILIM recently offers. Within this framework, our new website has come on stream on 1st June 2016.The previous website: http://dergipark.ulakbim.gov.tr/cumuilah/The new website        : http://cumhuriyet.dergipark.gov.tr/cuifdIn order to make known the articles, which are academic productions of highly significant endeavours, to international academia and increase the chance of getting referenced in international academic studies, we require both Turkish and English 150-word abstracts and 750-word summaries of the article that has accepted after peer-review process. For the first time, the articles are available with abstracts and summaries in this issue.Again, for the first time in this issue, we have published Turkish and English summaries of the doctorate thesis that are completed in Turkey and abroad. By doing so, we intend to make known Turkish theses to the wider audience, which may help to get them into international indexes. We have also offered Turkish summaries of the theses written in English.Our journal now has been indexed by international index ATLA Religion Database indeksfrom 20/05/2016. ATLA index conveys the information of articles via EBSCO to readers through library subscriptions. ATLA indexes only three journals from Turkey.Moreover, we have also announced the article preliminary review forms and the blind review process. We examine Turkish and English titles, summaries, and keywords to make sure that they correspond to the field’s terminology. Furthermore, we require proper nouns and concepts/terms to be written in the reference style of TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam. We also particularly require for the articles to use Chicago manual style referencing, which is clearly highlighted in our author guideline.To improve the academic quality of the journal, we have also checked the article up for plagiarism in a specific computer program designed for this job. The articles that are marked with a result higher than %15 on this program are returned to the authors with a plagiarism report.We have applied the double-blind review process for the issue 20.1 and decided not to announce the identities of reviewers since 2016.Small notes for the next issue (20.1/15 December 2016)We will begin to accept articles for 20th volume 2nd issue between 01 June and 15 October 2016. The articles that are uploaded after this deadline to our new system will be gone through peer review process to be published in June 2017.We will require 150-word abstracts and 750-word summaries both in Turkish and English for the articles that have passed the peer-review.It might be right to note here that we have been getting more attention from scholarly world day by day with our mission and standards. The journal has received 63 articles between January-June 2016 from the Turkish academics. All articles have gone through the pre-review process to check the referencing and transliteration style before testing them via plagiarism checker. We then have forwarded the articles that are successfully passed the plagiarism check to our reviewers. After all this process, we have been able to offer to you 18 articles and article translation in this issue along with the summaries of 6 doctorate theses, one book review, and symposium introduction.We are delighted to offer you the various ranges of themes and topics with this new issue. We sincerely thank the authors who contributed to this issue, the editorial and review boards, and particularly to the assistant editors, R.A. Maruf Cakir, Asst. Prof. Adem Ciftci, and Asst. Prof. Sema Yilmaz, and the assistant editors of the language review-process R.A. Zeynep Ceran, Dr. Emrah Kaya and Zeynep Yucedogru.We hope to see you all on 15 December 2016 with our next issue.15 June 2016Omer ASLAN & Abdullah DEMIREditors