Plagiarism Policy

IJIIS is strictly against any unethical act of copying or plagiarism in any form. The journal will check all submitted manuscripts for plagiarism before review process and publishing online. If the plagiarism is detected in the manuscripts at any stage of publication process, the editors, peer reviewers or editorial staff have the right to reject them based on the percentile of plagiarism and it would be notified to authors.

The journal uses Turnitin to screen for plagiarism. Authors submitting to the journal should be aware that their paper will be submitted to Turnitin at any point during the peer-review or production process.

Any allegations of plagiarism will be investigated by the editor of the journal following COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines).  If the allegations appear to be founded, the journal will then contact all named authors of the paper and request an explanation of the overlapping material. The journal may ask Editorial Board members and the author’s institution to assist in further evaluation of the paper and allegations.

Based on the investigation and reply from the author(s), the journal will decide how to proceed, using COPE flowcharts (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts) where applicable. This may result in the following actions being taken, depending on the nature and severity of the case:

  • If a paper is still in peer review, it may be returned to the author with a request that they address the issues through appropriate citation, use of quote marks to identify direct quotes, or re-writing.
  • If the similarity between the manuscripts is too extensive for revision, it may be rejected.
  • If the paper is already published online, a correction, expression of concern or retraction may be published.
  • The author’s institution may also be informed.
  • A correction can be published for minor similarities only where there is no misattribution or deliberate lack of attribution of work (e.g., to add in a missing full citation/ reference to the source material). A correction notice cannot be used to effectively ‘fix’ or rewrite the plagiarized sections.