Plagiarism Policy
IEJMS has zero tolerance for plagiarism in any form, including self-plagiarism and undisclosed duplicate publication.
Screening
Every submission is screened with similarity-detection software before it is sent for peer review, and again before publication. A similarity index is not by itself proof of plagiarism — matches to the authors' own methods sections, standard phrasing and correctly quoted and cited material are assessed by an editor rather than treated mechanically.
Forms of plagiarism we act on
- Verbatim copying of text from another source without quotation and citation.
- Paraphrasing another's work closely without attribution.
- Reusing figures, tables or images without permission and credit.
- Appropriating ideas, methods or results encountered in grant proposals or manuscripts seen in confidence.
- Self-plagiarism — reusing substantial portions of one's own earlier publications without citing them.
- Duplicate or redundant publication — publishing the same study, or a thinly divided part of it, more than once.
Consequences
| When detected | Action |
|---|---|
| Before review | Returned to the authors for correction, or rejected outright depending on the extent. |
| During review | Review is suspended; the authors are asked to explain; the manuscript is normally rejected. |
| After publication | Correction or retraction under the corrections policy, with a public notice linked to the article. The authors' institution may be informed. |
Reusing your own work
Authors reusing their own previously published text, data or figures must cite the original source and make clear what is being reused, even where they hold the copyright. Manuscripts that build on a conference paper or a preprint are welcome, provided the earlier version is disclosed at submission and cited, and the new manuscript makes a substantive addition.