Medical Laboratory Journal- Plagiarism
Plagiarism

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Medical Laboratory Journal adheres to the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines set forth by the Committee on Publication ethics (COPE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
We accept all terms and conditions of COPE about plagiarism and in case, any attempt of plagiarism is brought to our attention accompanied by convincing evidence, we act based on flowcharts and workflows determined in COPE.
The Editorial Boards of Medical Laboratory Journal takes the necessary measures to examine the incoming papers on their originality, reliability of contained information and correct use of citations. The Editorial Board of Medical Laboratory Journal acknowledges that plagiarism is unacceptable and therefore establishes the following policies that state-specific actions (penalties) if plagiarism is identified in a manuscript submitted for publication in Medical Laboratory Journal.
Authors should ensure that they submit only entirely original works. If they have used the work and/or statements of others, this must be appropriately cited or referenced. Plagiarism in any forms, including quotations or paraphrasing of substantial parts of another’s article (without attribution), “passing off” another’s article as the author’s own or claiming results from research conducted by others, constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Manuscripts that are a compilation of previously published materials of other authors (without their own creative and authoring interpretation) are not accepted for publication.
It is inadmissible to use unfair text borrowing and assigning research results not belonging to the authors of the submitted manuscript.
The authors must ensure that the submitted manuscript:
- describes completely the original work;
- is not plagiarism;
- has not been published before in any language;
- the information used or words from other publications are appropriately indicated by reference or indicated in the text.
Existing copyright laws and conventions must be observed. Materials protected by copyright (for example, tables, figures or large quotations) should only be reproduced with the permission of their owner.
Medical Laboratory Journal takes responsibility to assist a scientific community in all aspects of publication ethics policy, particularly in the case of multiple submission/publication and plagiarism. The editors reserve the right to check the received manuscripts for plagiarism.
The manuscript submitted to Medical Laboratory Journal must have similarity level less than 10%. Similarity per each detected references also must be maximum 1%. Textual similarity in the amount of more than 10% is unacceptable.
 
The Policy of Screening for Plagiarism
All manuscripts must be free from plagiarism contents. All authors are suggested to use plagiarism detection software to do the similarity checking. Editors check the plagiarism detection of manuscripts in Medical Laboratory Journal by using Grammarly detection software (www.grammarly.com) and using iThenticate since September 2019. Medical Laboratory Journal will immediately reject papers leading to plagiarism or self-plagiarism.
Medical Laboratory Journal adheres to international practices of preventing plagiarism. Thus, all authors that submit their manuscripts to the journal must check that their academic work respects the copyrights of other scholars and avoids any and all plagiarism. Once the manuscript is submitted to the journal, the editorial board will assign a group of anti-plagiarism members to check the manuscript through various tools. If proof of plagiarism is found, the manuscript will be rejected immediately, and the Editorial Board will communicate with the author to demand an explanation and the amendment of the plagiarized content. If the author does not respond within a reasonable length of time or does not make the necessary adjustments, they will not be able to submit manuscripts to the journal for a period of five (5) years. If the Editorial Board has reason to believe that the manuscript was not drafted or researched in an ethical manner, the journal’s implemented code of ethics (Committee on Publication Ethics [Code of Conduct and Best Practices Guidelines for Journals Editors]) will be reviewed and act accordingly.
 
Definition of Plagiarism:
"Plagiarism is the use of others' published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) without attribution or permission, and presenting them as new and original rather than derived from an existing source. The intent and effect of plagiarism is to mislead the reader as to the contributions of the plagiarizer. This applies whether the ideas or words are taken from abstracts, research grant applications, Institutional Review Board applications, or unpublished or published manuscripts in any publication format (print or electronic). Plagiarism is scientific misconduct and should be addressed as such. Self-plagiarism refers to the practice of an author using portions of their previous writings on the same topic in another of their publications, without specifically citing it formally in quotes. This practice is widespread and sometimes unintentional, as there are only so many ways to say the same thing on many occasions, particularly when writing the Methods section of an article. Although this usually violates the copyright that has been assigned to the publisher, there is no consensus as to whether this is a form of scientific misconduct, or how many of one's own words one can use before it is truly "plagiarism." Probably for this reason self-plagiarism is not regarded in the same light as plagiarism of the ideas and words of other individuals. If journals have developed a policy on this matter, it should be clearly stated for authors." (WAME, 2020).
Direct plagiarism is the plagiarism of the text. Mosaic plagiarism is the borrowing of ideas and opinions from an original source and a few verbatim words or phrases without crediting the author. Plagiarism is committed when one author uses another work (typically the work of another author) without permission, credit, or acknowledgment. Plagiarism takes different forms, from literal copying to paraphrasing the work of another.
Authors can adhere to the following steps to report plagiarism:
  • Inform the editor of Medical Laboratory Journal where a plagiarized paper is published.
  • Send original and plagiarized papers with plagiarized part highlighted.
  • If evidence of plagiarism is convincing, the editor should arrange for a disciplinary meeting.
  • The editor of the journal where the plagiarized paper should communicate with the editor of the journal containing the original paper to rectify the matter.
  • The plagiarist should be asked to provide an explanation.
  • In case of nonresponse in the stipulated time or an unsatisfactory explanation, the paper should be permanently retracted.
  • Author should be blacklisted and debarred for submitted a paper to a particular journal for at least 5 years.
  • The concerned head of the institution has to be notified.
The author bears the responsibility for checking whether material submitted is subject to copyright or ownership rights, e.g., figures, tables, photographs, illustrations, trade literature and data. The author will need to obtain permission to reproduce any such items and include these permissions with their final submission. Where use is so restricted, the editorial office and Publisher must be informed with the final submission of the material. Please add any necessary acknowledgments to the typescript, preferably in the form of an Acknowledgments section at the end of the paper. Credit the source and copyright of photographs, figures, illustrations etc. in the supplementary captions.
Plagiarism is an act intentionally or unintentionally in obtaining or trying to obtain credit or value for scientific work, by quoting part or all of the work and/or scientific work of other parties that are recognized as scientific works, without expressing the source appropriately and adequately. Therefore, manuscripts must be original, never published, and not in the process of waiting for publication elsewhere. Material taken verbally from other sources needs to be clearly identified so that it is different from the original text.
If plagiarism is identified, the Editor-in-Chief is responsible for reviewing the manuscript and will approve the action in accordance with the level of plagiarism detected, with the following guidelines:
 
Plagiarism Level
1. Tracing a portion of a short sentence from another paper without mentioning the source.
Action: Authors are given warnings and requests to change the text and quote correctly.
2. Tracing most of the other papers without the right quote and not mentioning the source.
Actions: The submitted manuscript is rejected for publication in Medical Laboratory Journal and the Author can be sanctioned for not being allowed to publish in the journal.
3. All manuscript writers are responsible for the content of manuscripts they submit to the journal. If the manuscript is classified as plagiarism, then all authors will be subject to the same action.
4. If the author is proven to submit the manuscript to the journal by simultaneously sending it to another journal, and this overlap is found during the reviewer process or after publication, then the action according to point 2 above is given.
5. If plagiarism is found outside the rules above, the editor of the journal has the right to give sanctions according to the editor's team policy.
6. In the case of multiple borrowing Editorial Board acts according to the rules of COPE.
 
There are several indicators of plagiarism that all authors must be aware of:
1. The most easily identifiable plagiarism is that of repeated content when an author copies another author's work by reciting words, sentences, or paragraphs without citing original sources. This plagiarism model can be easily identified by our plagiarism checker software.
2. The second type of plagiarism occurs when an author reproduces the substantial part of another writer's work, without citing him/her. The term "reproducing substance" here can be understood as copying another's ideas, both in terms of quantity and quality, which potentially eliminates the original author's rights, in the context of intellectual property.
3. The third type of plagiarism when an author takes ideas, words, or phrases in paraphrased sentences or paragraphs, without citing the original source. This type of plagiarism often cannot be checked through plagiarism software, as it is idea-based. Yet, this practice becomes unethical when the author does not cite, nor acknowledge the original source from the original writer.
Topic URL in Medical Laboratory Journal website:
http://mlj.goums.ac.ir/find-1.91.48.en.html
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