Plagiarism Policy

  1. Authors are responsible for ensuring that their works are original and that any content that is not wholly their own is fully acknowledged. The journal will use plag software to check manuscripts for plagiarism (i.e., replicating any content without acknowledgment and permission) and considers the authors' inclusion of plagiarised content to be misconduct.

 

  1. Any plagiarism changes brought to the board's attention, as well as instances that arise during the peer review process, will be thoroughly investigated. When such behavior is confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt, it is unacceptable and will be appropriately exposed. Self-plagiarism will be taken seriously as well. The authors or corresponding author will be required to sign an undertaking stating that the work has not been submitted elsewhere for publication, that the claimed new results are the author's own findings, and that all material taken from the existing literature has been properly acknowledged and referenced upon receipt of the manuscript.

 

  1. If plagiarism, duplication, or re-publication of previously published work in any language is discovered after the manuscript has been accepted or after publication, the case is referred to the NJFPM editorial board, which conducts a comprehensive inspection while giving the concerned authors adequate opportunity to respond. The published article may be withdrawn if the author agreement is violated or if the researcher commits grave and unethical wrongdoing in relation to publishing the study.

 

  1. Only manuscripts with less than 10% plagiarised content will be accepted.

 

List of various possibilities concerning Plagiarism:

  • Copying of another’s work and submitting it as one’s own.
  • Copying of significant portions of the text from a single source.
  • Mixing copied material from multiple sources is termed patchwork copying which could range from 1-2 paragraphs to major portions consisting of various paragraphs.
  • Changing “keywords” and “phrases” but the essential content of the source remains the same.
  • Rephrasing the original wording of the text and submitting it as one’s own.
  • Combining slightly rephrased material from multiple sources and presenting what has been published already as original work.
  • The cited portions are not clearly identified, though they are cited.
  • Use of copied parts of the text without citation

 

Guidelines to Authors for maintaining ethics in their work and avoiding Plagiarism:  

  • A writer should always acknowledge the contributions of others to his/her work.
  • While paraphrasing or summarizing, one must always identify the source of information.
  • When paraphrasing and/or summarizing others’ work one must ensure that he is reproducing the exact meaning of the other author’s ideas or facts by using his own words and sentence structure.
  • The text taken from other sources should be enclosed in quotation marks and citation must be there to indicate its origin.
  • To summarize others’ work, one should use simpler words to condense and convey others’ contributions in a shorter version of the original.
  • When paraphrasing others’ work, one must use his own words in addition to his own syntactical structure.
  • One should have a thorough command of the language and a good understanding of the ideas and terminology being used for making substantial modifications to the original text that result in a proper paraphrase.
  • Authors of complex studies should heed the advice previously put forth by Angell & Relman (1989). If the results of a single complex study are best presented as a ‘cohesive’ single whole, they should not be partitioned into individual papers. Furthermore, if there is any doubt as to whether a paper submitted for publication represents fragmented data, authors should enclose other papers (published or unpublished) that might be part of the paper under consideration (Kassirer & Angell, 1995).
  • One should provide a citation when in doubt as to whether a concept or fact is common knowledge.
  • Authors who submit a manuscript for publication containing previously disseminated data, reviews, conclusions, etc., must clearly indicate to the editors and readers the nature of the previous dissemination. The provenance of data must never be in doubt.
  • Authors are expected to double-check their citations.
  • The references used in a paper should only be those that are directly related to its contents. The intentional inclusion of references of questionable relevance for purposes such as manipulating a journal’s or a paper’s impact factor or a paper’s chances of acceptance, is an unacceptable practice.
  • The actual work that is consulted or used, should be cited without being subsequently corrected or modified.
  • When describing others’ work, an original paper must not be cited if one is only relying on a secondary summary of that paper.
  • When borrowing largely from a source, authors must always present their writing in a way that makes clear to readers which ideas/data are their own and which are derived from sources being consulted.
  • Authors have an ethical responsibility to report evidence that runs contrary to their point of view, wherever needed.
  • Authors have an ethical obligation to report all aspects of the study that may impact the replicability of their research by independent observers.
  • Authorship determination should be discussed prior to commencing research collaboration and should be based on established guidelines.
  • Only those individuals who have made substantive contributions to a project are eligible for authorship in a paper.
  • Faculty-student collaborations should follow the same criteria to establish authorship. Mentors must award authorship to meritorious students only, not to the ones whose contributions do not merit it.
  • Academic or professional ghost authorship is ethically unacceptable.