Research Integrity
Plagiarism and Research Integrity
Principles for maintaining originality, transparency and research integrity.
Fundamental principle: Authors bear primary responsibility for the originality and integrity of their submitted work.
Matters subject to review
- Plagiarism or use of another person’s text, ideas, data or results without appropriate acknowledgment
- Duplicate or substantially overlapping publication without transparent disclosure
- Simultaneous submission to multiple journals
- Fabrication or falsification of data and results
- Unjustified manipulation of data, images, references or results
- Honorary, ghost or otherwise inappropriate authorship practices
Similarity screening
Where appropriate infrastructure is available, the journal may use specialized text-similarity tools before or during review. A similarity score alone is not treated as conclusive evidence of misconduct; it must be interpreted in context.
Handling procedure
- Identification of or report concerning a possible integrity issue.
- Preliminary assessment and, where necessary, a request for explanation from the corresponding author.
- Review of the available evidence and responses.
- Proportionate action based on the evidence and seriousness of the matter.
Post-publication concerns
If a serious integrity problem is identified after publication, the journal may consider a correction, expression of concern or retraction in accordance with its post-publication policy.
Screening tools
The name of any similarity-detection system and any numerical thresholds will be published only after the relevant infrastructure has been formally selected and implemented.