Plagiarism is defined as unattributed use of large portions of text and/or data or any previously published work without consent, credit, or acknowledgment and fraudulently passing it as one’s own work. It may also include text(s), illustrations, musical quotations, extended mathematical derivations, computer codes, material downloaded from websites or drawn from manuscripts; published and unpublished material, including lectures, presentations etc. An author is alleged of plagiarism if there are act of minor copying of short phrases in discussions; or literal (word–for-word) copying of large parts from a published paper; or reproducing major parts of a previously published paper such as text, tables, and figures; or paraphrasing large texts without verbatim copying the text; or recycling author’s own previously published text, termed as self-plagiarism, without citation of the prior work.  COPE provides clear guidelines on processes to be followed to check plagiarism when detected before and after publication. Please click here for further information.

Besides, there are instructions on how to check all submissions through appropriate plagiarism checking tools. We use plagiarism-checking software, CrossCheck, powered by iThenticate, for all manuscripts submitted for publication. This assists editors in identifying plagiarism in all submissions.   Submissions containing suspected plagiarism, in whole or part, are rejected. If plagiarism is discovered post-publication, we can retract the article. We expect our readers, reviewers and editors to raise any suspicions of plagiarism, either by contacting the relevant editor or by emailing publicationethics@aessweb.com.