Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism
‘The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own’  Oxford Dictionaries
Submitted manuscripts should be the original works of the author(s). Academic Journals will follow COPE guidelines in suspected cases of plagiarism. All submitted manuscripts will be checked by reputable and premium versions of plagiarism software. 

Duplicate manuscripts
"Duplicate publication is publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published, without clear, visible reference to the previous publication" ICMJE Overlapping Publications, It is unethical for authors to submit a manuscript to more than one journal at the same time, either within Academic Journals or any other journal. This includes the submission of manuscripts derived from the same data in such a manner that there are no substantial differences in the manuscripts. Duplicate submission also includes the submission of the same/similar manuscript in different languages to different journals.

Fabrication and falsification of data
Fabrication, manipulation or falsification of data is a violation of this publication's ethics. Academic Journals will follow the COPE guidelines in suspected cases of fabrication and falsification of data.

Citations manipulation
Authors should use only citations that are relevant to their manuscripts. The addition of references which are not relevant to the work is strongly discouraged. Irrelevant self-citation to increase one’s citation is unethical. Unnecessary citation of articles for the sole purpose of “increasing” the articles’ citation is unethical. Unnecessary citation of articles from a particular journal to “increase” the journal's citation is unethical.

Note:

MODUS Journal Editorial Board recognizes that plagiarism is unacceptable and therefore established the following policy stating specific actions (penalties) when plagiarism is identified in articles submitted for publication in the MODUS Journal. All manuscripts will undergo pre-screening for plagiarism checking using Turnitin Software. The screening process will be carried out by the Editor after the manuscript is received.

Provision:

  1. Articles must be original, previously unpublished, and not awaiting publication elsewhere. Any material taken verbatim from another source needs to be identified as distinct from the existing original text using (1) indentation, (2) use of quotation marks, and (3) identification of the source.
  2. Any text exceeding fair use standards (here defined as more than two or three sentences or equivalent) or any graphic material produced from other sources requires permission from the copyright holder and, where possible requires identification of the source; for example, previous publications.
  3. When plagiarism is identified, the Editor-in-Chief is responsible for reviewing this paper and will approve action according to the level of plagiarism detected in the paper by existing guidelines.

 

Conditions for passing plagiarism:

Passed the Turnitin test with a low significance plagiarism level of a maximum of 20% where a short section from another article was plagiarized without any significant data or ideas taken from another paper. Thus a warning action can be taken where the editor submits a request to the author to change the text and cite the original article correctly.

The MODUS Journal Editor is responsible for maintaining a list of penalized authors and will check that no authors of submitted articles are on the blacklist of plagiarized authors. If a prohibited author is identified, the editor will inform the Editor-in-Chief to take appropriate action. This policy will be posted on the website with instructions for submitting manuscripts, and a copy will be sent to authors with a confirmation email upon initial receipt of their original manuscript. A sentence must be added to the copyright transfer form to indicate that the author has read the Plagiarism Policy.