Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism before publication

JECD Editorial Board will judge any case of plagiarism on its own merits. If plagiarism is detected, either by the editors, peer reviewers or editorial staff at any stage before publication of a manuscript (before or after acceptance, during editing or at page proof stage), the author(s) will be alerted and asked to either rewrite the text or quote the text exactly and cite the original source.

If the plagiarism is extensive—i.e., if at least 25% of the original submission is plagiarized—the article may be rejected and the author's institution/employer notified.

When is plagiarism check done?

Every manuscript submitted for publication to any journal published by JECD is checked for plagiarism after submission and before being sent to an editor for editorial review.

How are manuscripts with plagiarism handled?

The manuscripts in which plagiarism is detected are handled based on the extent of plagiarism present:

• <5% plagiarism: The manuscript is assigned a manuscript ID and it is immediately sent back to the authors for content revision.
• 5–25% plagiarism: The manuscript is not assigned a manuscript ID and it is immediately sent back to the authors for content revision and re-submission.
• >25% plagiarism: The manuscript is rejected without editorial review.

Why are manuscripts with >25% plagiarism rejected?

It is our experience that if a submitted manuscript has >25% plagiarism it is very unlikely that the authors will revise the manuscript and submit the revised version. If the manuscript is kept in the journal publication system indefinitely, it creates an extra burden on technical and human resources. However, authors are welcome to do the required revisions and submit the manuscript as a new submission.

How is percentage of plagiarized text calculated?

The percentage of plagiarism is calculated by software and also assessed manually. Please note that the plagiarized text may be scattered throughout the manuscript or it may appear as a single paragraph or as a single block of text with multiple paragraphs. In some cases it may be difficult to calculate the exact percentage of plagiarized text.

It may happen that the manuscript is not freely accessible to article indexing services due to restrictions by programmers, journals or publishers; or it is available on the journal website but not yet indexed by article indexing services. In such cases, when plagiarism check is done, the content of the manuscript being checked cannot be compared to the original manuscript due to restrictions and plagiarism will not be detected.

Duplicate Publication

Duplicate publication may occur in the following situations:

1. The same manuscript, with or without minor changes, is submitted to two or more journals at the same time and is published in both journals.
2. A manuscript is submitted to a journal but is withdrawn before publication and submitted to another journal; however, it is still published in the first journal.

In these cases, when pre-processing check is done by one journal, duplicate publication will not be detected, as the manuscript is still under process in the other journal and has not been published online. It is likely that one journal will publish the manuscript, unaware that it is also being published elsewhere.

In all the above examples, after the manuscript is published, readers will see two published articles in two different journals with all or some content which is exactly the same.

What can you do if you come across a case of plagiarism?

If you come across a case of plagiarism in any journal from any publisher, please inform our editorial office, providing the journal names, title of manuscripts, name of authors, volume number, issue number, year of publication, and any other information you may have. We will handle the cases as per our policy.

Plagiarism after publication

If plagiarism is detected after publication, the JECD Editorial Board will conduct an investigation. If plagiarism is found, the journal editorial office will contact the author's institute and funding agencies. The paper containing the plagiarism will be marked on each page of the PDF. Depending on the extent of the plagiarism, the paper may also be formally retracted.