Plagiarism Policy
Journal of Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University
The journal uses best practices for checking plagiarism in the content submitted and has the rights to inform the author and reject the manuscript based on set limits. Manuscripts are screened for plagiarism using iThenticate / Turnitin software. An unacceptable level of similarity will be returned for resubmission after appropriate corrections made by the author(s). Those found guilty or involved in publication misconduct are liable to be black listed.
Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and representing them as one’s own original work. Within the academia, researcher is considered academic dishonesty or academic fraud and offenders are subject to academic censure. Plagiarism can be unintentional or intentional reproducing academic material without appropriate citation. Similarly, self-plagiarism is the re-use of significant, identical or near identical portions of one’s own work without citing the original work. This is also known as “Recycling fraud”. Worst form of plagiarism is to steal the whole article from some journal and publish it under own name in another journal. Lately the use of internet has made it easier to plagiarize, by copying the electronic tests and using them as original work.
The Editorial Board of JSTMU will blacklist any author found to be guilty of plagiarism. The name of author(s) committing plagiarism will also be disseminated to editors of other medical journals.
We all know that scholarly manuscripts are written after thorough review of previously published articles. It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content. These are:
Reproduction of others words, sentences, ideas or findings as one’s own without proper acknowledgement.
Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism. It is an author’s use of a previous publication in another paper without proper citation and acknowledgement of the original source.
Poor paraphrasing: Copying complete paragraphs and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.
Verbatim copying of text without putting quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.
Properly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered as unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language somewhere between paraphrasing and quoting are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and in both cases, cite the original source.
Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways. However, technical terms and sometimes standard procedures cannot be rephrased; therefore Editors must review these sections carefully before making a decision.
Published manuscripts which are found to contain plagiarized text are retracted from the journal’s website after careful investigation and approval by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. A ‘Retraction Note’ as well as a link to the original article is published on the electronic version of the plagiarized manuscript and an addendum with retraction notification in the particular journal.
HEC Plagiarism Policy [Download here]