Plagiarism Policy
Papers must be original, unpublished, and not pending publication elsewhere. Any material taken verbatim from another source needs to be identified as different from the present original text by indentation, use of quotation marks, and identification of the source. Any text exceeding fair use standards, defined here as more than two or three sentences or the equivalent thereof, or any graphic material reproduced from another source, requires permission from the copyright holder and, if feasible, the original author(s), and also requires identification of the source, for example a previous publication.
Every manuscript that passes the initial editorial assessment is screened using Turnitin similarity-checking software before it proceeds to peer review. When plagiarism is identified, whether through this screening or during the review process itself, the Editor-in-Chief responsible for the review of the paper decides on measures according to the extent of plagiarism detected, following the guidelines below.
Level of Plagiarism
- Minor. A short section of another article is plagiarized without any significant data or idea taken from the other paper.
Action: A warning is given to the authors, with a request to revise the text and properly cite the original article. - Intermediate. A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized without proper citation to the original paper.
Action: The submitted article is rejected, and the authors are barred from submitting further articles for one year. - Severe. A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized, involving the reproduction of original results or ideas presented in another publication.
Action: The paper is rejected, and the authors are barred from submitting further articles for five years.
ICJLS takes academic integrity very seriously. The editors reserve the right to withdraw acceptance from a paper found to violate any of the standards set out above.
