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Screening for Plagiarism
Advance Sustainable Science, Engineering and Technology (ASSET) checks every submitted manuscript for similarity using Turnitin. The software compares the manuscript with a database of periodicals, the internet and a comprehensive article database, and produces a similarity report showing the percentage of overlap with published material.
Similarity limits
| Similarity (excluding references) | Action |
|---|---|
| Overall ≤ 20% and no large overlap with a single source | Manuscript continues to peer review. |
| Overall ≤ 20% but a large share from a single source (e.g. 15% from one article) | Returned to the authors to rephrase and cite the original source before review. |
| Overall > 20% | Returned to the authors for revision, or rejected if the overlap indicates plagiarism. |
The similarity score is a screening aid only; the Editor always examines the report to judge whether the overlap is legitimate (e.g. standard methods, technical terms, properly quoted text) or plagiarism.
Types of plagiarism
- Reproducing others' words, sentences, ideas or findings as one's own without proper acknowledgement.
- Text recycling (self-plagiarism): re-using one's own previously published text without citation.
- Poor paraphrasing: copying paragraphs and changing only a few words or the sentence order.
- Verbatim copying without quotation marks and without acknowledging the original author.
Properly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing it is still considered (unintentional) plagiarism. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote, and in both cases cite the original source. Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, methods, discussion and conclusion indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarised text; standard technical terms and procedures are assessed carefully by the Editor before a decision is made.
Plagiarism in published articles
Published articles found to contain plagiarised text are retracted after investigation and approval by the Editor-in-Chief, following the COPE guidelines. A retraction note linked to the original article is published (see Correction and Retraction and Research Misconduct).
