Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism is defined as:

To take someone else's work and pass it off as your own, or to promote someone else's existing idea as new and innovative.

Plagiarism is defined as any of the following:

1. Passing off someone else's work as your own
2. Using someone else's thoughts or ideas without giving credit
3. Providing inaccurate source information
4. Changing words but replicating a source's sentence structure without attribution
5. Plagiarizing so many words or ideas from a source that it accounts for the majority of your work, whether or not you provide credit.
6. Plagiarism occurs when you use an image, figures, or graphs in your work without first obtaining permission and properly citing them. If the use of any image, figures, or other elements of the work is required, the author must obtain express permission from the work's owner.

 Crossref Similarity Check Powered by iThenticate

Under the criteria of COPE, the journals adhere to the best practices in scholarly publishing ethics. All the papers submitted have to pass through an initial screening and will be checked through the Advanced Plagiarism Detection Software (CrossCheck by iThenticate). iThenticate is the leading provider of professional plagiarism detection and prevention technology used worldwide by scholarly publishers. It helps editors, authors, and researchers avoid plagiarism by comparing submissions to its database of over 60 billion web pages and 155 million content items, which includes 49 million works from 800 scholarly publishers who use Crossref Similarity Check powered by iThenticate software.

Plagiarism Policy and Action

Before the peer-review process, the journals conduct a similarity check on each submission, and based on the content of the similarity check, the following steps are taken:

1. The document will be returned to the author for editing if it is deemed to have less similarity. After deleting all resemblance and rewriting the text, the author can resubmit the manuscript. After editing, the resubmitted work will be scrutinised further to ensure that there is no plagiarism or duplicating of already published data.
2. If there is a high level of resemblance in the content, the work will be rejected and will not be  considered for editing and publishing.

If plagiarism is discovered at a later stage, all actions related to the plagiarism offence will be taken. 

The paper will be withdrawn if the level of plagiarism identified after publication is too high.

Authors' Recommendation

1. Always cite references and acknowledge ideas correctly.
2. All references must provide complete bibliographic data.
3. All sources cited in the text and vice versa must be listed in the bibliography.
4. Quotation marks should be used if more than six consecutive words are reproduced.
5. You must have obtained authorization to utilise copyright-protected information from other authors/publishers.
   
   

AI Plagiarism in Content

This journal adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles to ensure integrity, originality, and accountability in scholarly publishing.

Authorship and AI tools | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics

 

Authorship and Responsibility

• AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) cannot be listed as authors.
• Human authors are fully responsible for verifying accuracy, originality, and proper attribution of all manuscript content.

Plagiarism Screening

• All submissions will be checked for plagiarism using similarity detection tools. i.e. AI plag should not be more than 20%.
• AI may be used to assist with language editing, grammar improvement, or text summarization.
• Such use must be minor, and authors must retain full intellectual ownership of the work.
• AI-generated passages must not be presented as original scholarly contribution.
• Submissions must be the original work of the authors.
• Use of AI tools to generate text must be disclosed transparently in the manuscript (e.g., in Methods, Acknowledgments, or a dedicated “AI Disclosure” section).
• Undisclosed use of AI text generation constitutes academic misconduct and may be treated as plagiarism.
• Copying/paraphrasing outputs from AI without proper citation, which will be treated as plagiarism.
• Manuscripts showing AI-plagiarized or fabricated content will be rejected, and serious cases may lead to notification of the authors’ institutions.

Editorial Actions

• If AI plagiarism is detected:
• Pre-publication: Manuscript may be rejected.
• Post-publication: Corrections, expressions of concern, or retraction may be issued in line with COPE procedures.

Summary Statement for Authors:

AI tools may support language editing or illustration, but authors must disclose their use. Presenting undisclosed AI-generated content as original work is considered plagiarism and will be acted upon according to COPE ethical standards.