Plagiarism Policy

1. This journal strongly opposes the practice of duplicate publication or any type of plagiarism.
   This journal aims to publish original high-quality research work. Submission of a manuscript to this journal indicates that the study has not been published anywhere or not been submitted elsewhere for publication. Suppose the author(s) are using any part of a published paper (in English or any other language). In that case, they should give a proper reference, or in any case, if required, they should get permission from the previous publisher or copyright holder (Acta Traditional Medicine).
   Plagiarized manuscripts would not be considered for publication. If plagiarism is found in any published paper after an internal investigation, a letter would be immediately sent to all the authors, their affiliated institutes and funding agency, if applied and subsequently, the paper will be retracted.
   The plagiarism policy of The Nature mainly inspires the plagiarism policy of this journal. The plagiarism policy of this journal is described below:
   1. Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else’s work as his or her own. This journal also adopted the IEEE definition of plagiarism to deal with such cases. It defines plagiarism as “the reuse of someone else’s prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicitly acknowledging the original author and source.”
   2. Plagiarism can be said to have occurred when large chunks of text have been cut-and-pasted. Such manuscripts would not be considered for publication in this journal. Papers with confirmed plagiarisms are rejected immediately.
   3. But minor plagiarism without dishonest intent is relatively frequent, for example, when an author reuses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper.
   4. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her published work without providing the appropriate references. This can range from getting an identical paper published in multiple journals to ‘salami-slicing’, where authors add small amounts of new data to a previous paper. Self-plagiarism, also referred to as ‘text recycling’, is a topical issue and is currently generating much discussion among editors. Opinions are divided on how much text overlap with an author’s previous publications is acceptable. We normally follow the guidelines given on the COPE website. Editors, reviewers, and authors are also requested to strictly follow this excellent guideline (Reference: Text Recycling Guidelines: http://publicationethics.org/text-recycling-guidelines).
   5. In case of ‘suspected minor plagiarism’, authors are contacted for clarification. Depending on all these reports, reviewers and editors decide the final fate of the manuscript. If the manuscript is finally accepted and published, then to maintain transparency, all these reports are published in the ‘publication history’ of the paper by following the Advanced OPEN peer review system. The journal editors judge any case they become aware of its own merits (either by their knowledge of and reading about the literature or when alerted by referees).
   6. The automated software is helpful to detect the ‘copy-paste’ problem. All submitted manuscripts are Acta Traditional Medicine: an International Journal help of different databases, eTBLAST, Plagiarism Detection tools, etc. At the same time scientific implication of the case (‘suspected minor plagiarism’), also judged by reviewers and editors. Plagiarism Detection tools are useful, but they should be used with human judgment and discretion for the conclusion. Therefore, editors judge suspected plagiarism cases on a ‘case-to-case basis’.
   7. Editors have the final decision power for these cases.
   Some useful information is available at the following links:
   1. http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/library/plagiarismdetection
   2. http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/plagiarism.html
   3. http://www.artjohnson.umd.edu/bioe/Threshold-for-Plagiarism.pdf
   4. http://www.zju.edu.cn/jzus/download/editorpapers/SCIMsurvey.pdf
   5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism_detection
   6. The Complete Guide to Referencing & Avoiding Plagiarism
   7. Plagiarism Screening: What’s the Magic Number?

This journal is determined to promote integrity in research publication. We have great respect, and we generally follow the guidelines given by COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION ETHICS (COPE) for any publication disputes, authorship disputes, etc. We generally visit and follow the COPE website for these kinds of disputes, and author(s) are also requested to do so. Excellent guidelines related to COPE’s Code of Conduct and its advice to tackle cases of suspected misconduct are available in this link
(http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). All the materials available in the COPE website are the copyright of COPE.

PORTABILITY OF PEER-REVIEW

1. To support efficient and thorough peer review, this journal aims to reduce the number of times a manuscript is reviewed after rejection from any journal, thereby speeding up the publication process and reducing the burden on peer reviewers. Request from the author for ‘transfer of manuscript’ from one journal to another may also be accommodated under this policy. Under the cases mentioned above, by following the ‘portability of peer-review policy, the publisher will pass the review comments of a particular manuscript to the editor of another journal at the authors’ request. We will reveal the reviewers’ names to the handling editor for editorial purposes unless reviewers let us know when they return their report that they do not wish us to share their report with another published journal and/or that they do not wish to participate further in the peer review of this manuscript.

SPECIAL NOTE FOR AUTHORS:

As a part of restructuring all journals, we are closing all the manuscripts, pending dormant for more than 4 weeks after the final acceptance mail. Due to restructuring our editorial policy and regulations, we have closed all the files of these types of manuscripts. Files of these manuscripts can be kept alive if authors agree to a fresh round of peer review by at least two peer reviewers or re-approved by the present editorial board.
For any queries, authors are requested to contact by mail submission@actabanica.org or editor@actabotanica.org