Plagiarism-Similarity Policy

Plagiarism, Similarity and Text Matching Guidelines

• It is the author(s)' responsibility to ascertain that s/he has submitted an entirely original work, giving due credit, by proper citations, to the works and words of others where they have been used.
• Plagiarism in all forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
• The editorial team routinely screens all submitted articles through Turnitin for similarity and plagiarism.
• Material quoted verbatim from the author(s)' previously published work or other sources must be placed in quotation marks and be cited appropriately.
• The similarity shall not exceed 10% (overall similarity) and shall be appropriately cited with the original source(s). 
• The author(s) must submit a declaration in the author agreement form that the similarity is 10% or less.
• The similarity from a single source shall not exceed 4%, as per HEC-Pakistan's guidelines.
• According to HEC-Pakistan's guidelines, the Editor-in-Chief of a journal may allow similarity up to 19% in exceptional cases.
• If the manuscript has a similarity of more than 10%, it will be forwarded to the Editor-in-Chief for conditional acceptance.
• The Editor-in-Chief may allow for the review process provided that during the review process, the author(s) will address the similarity fairly and according to the journal's requirements.