In scientific publishing, plagiarism occurs when an author uses another author’s scientific material without appropriate permission, credit, or acknowledgement. Plagiarism, whereby someone presents another person’s ideas, words, or other creative expressions as their own, constitutes a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also constitute a violation of copyright law. It can take various forms, ranging from verbatim copying to the inappropriate paraphrasing of another work.

Plagiarism includes the following:

• Word-for-word or near word-for-word copying, or deliberately paraphrasing portions of another author’s work without clearly indicating the source or appropriately identifying the copied material (for example, by using quotation marks).
• Copying equations, figures, or tables from another person’s work without properly citing the source and/or obtaining permission from the original author or copyright holder, where such permission is required.

Plagiarism is unethical and is not acceptable under any circumstances. All manuscripts submitted to the journal must contain original material.

As part of the journal’s publication procedure, every manuscript is screened for plagiarism. Manuscripts are checked upon initial submission, following positive peer-review reports, and again before a final decision on acceptance is made. iThenticate software is used to screen manuscripts for plagiarism. Any manuscript found to contain indications of plagiarism will be rejected in accordance with the Retraction Policy of Decision Intelligence and Complex Computing (DICC).