Plagiarism

 
Plagiarism Policy

Papers submitted to the Melt Journal will be screened for plagiarism using plagiarism detection tools. Additionally, we check with Copyscape for plagiarism. The Melt Journal will immediately reject papers leading to plagiarism or self-plagiarism.

The Melt Journal's plagiarism policy requires authors to submit papers with less than 20% plagiarism.

"Plagiarism is the use of others' published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) without attribution or permission and presenting them as new and original rather than derived from an existing source. The intent and effect of plagiarism are to mislead the reader regarding the contributions of the plagiarizer. This applies whether the ideas or words are taken from abstracts, research grant applications, Institutional Review Board applications, or unpublished or published manuscripts in any publication format. Plagiarism is a scientific error and should be treated as such.

Self-plagiarism refers to the practice of an author using portions of their previous writings on the same topic in other publications without specifically citing them formally. This practice is widespread and sometimes unintentional, as there are only so many ways to say the same thing on many occasions, especially when writing the methods section of an article. Although this typically violates copyright granted to the publisher, there is no consensus on whether it constitutes scientific misconduct or how much of one's own words can be reused before it is considered 'plagiarism.' For this reason, self-plagiarism is not regarded as the same as plagiarism of others' ideas and words. If a journal has developed a policy on this, it should be stated clearly for the authors."

Direct plagiarism is textual plagiarism. Mosaic plagiarism involves borrowing ideas and opinions from an original source and a few words or phrases word-for-word without crediting the author.

Authors can follow these steps to report plagiarism:

  1. Notify the editor of the journal where the plagiarized article was published.
  2. Submit the original and plagiarized articles with the plagiarized sections highlighted.
  3. If the evidence of plagiarism is convincing, the editor should arrange a disciplinary meeting.
  4. The editor of the journal where the plagiarized article appeared should communicate with the editor of the journal containing the original article to address the issue.
  5. The plagiarist should be asked to provide an explanation.
  6. In the event of no response within a specified time or an unsatisfactory explanation, the article should be permanently retracted.
  7. The author should be blacklisted and barred from submitting articles to the journal for at least five years.
  8. The head of the relevant institution should be notified.

Plagiarism can be detected using the Google search engine or one of the two programs: iThenticate or Turnitin.