Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism refers to intentional copying of others work without proper attribution or copies content without providing for appropriate references.
REF Press follow strict policy in case of plagiarism within its purview. Before, during or after the publication process if the editorial board member, reviewer, author etc. detects any element of plagiarism; the authors are advised to provide proper citations. An article plagiarized more than 25% is summarily rejected and the author is informed the same.
The submitted manuscript is checked for the plagiarism before starting the review process.
If < 5% plagiarism is detected the manuscript is sent for revision by proving an ID. The manuscript is sent back to the author if the plagiarism extent is in between 5% to 30%, but the manuscript is not provided with an ID. If more than 30% plagiarism is detected, the manuscript is rejected without the review process and the authors are advised to revise and resubmit the manuscript.
The publishers request our readers if they come across any instance of the plagiarism; they are requested to provide sufficient information to the editorial office giving the details such as the journal name, manuscript title, volume number, issue number, year of publication or any other information which may be of interest to the journal. The publisher guidelines are taken into consideration in this regard.
The manuscript which clears the review process and gets published in the journal but later on detected to contain plagiarized content, the author’s office and funding agencies are contacted. Each page of the PDF is marked and based on the extent of plagiarism; the article may be formally retracted.
Anti-plagiarism software is employed to check the originality of an article. The manuscript that is submitted is understood to be unpublished work and is not considered for publication elsewhere. Duplicate publication of the submitted manuscript in whole or in parts will be considered as a breaching of plagiarism policy and is not welcome by the journal. Plagiarism also essentially violates the laws of copyright and one’s original ideas, words and the unique expressions are seriously ill-represented. The plagiarism is also extended to figures, tables, equations or illustrations, direct downloads from the internet without proper acknowledgement to the sources from which they are taken.
Sometimes, the authors are in danger of committing self-plagiarism. It refers to reuse of one’s own copyrighted material without proper attribution to the original source. If a categorical reference is made to previously published work or the exact sentences are cited in quotation marks, it clearly separates it from the rest of the content and doesn’t create any ambiguity. At times, the authors may not aware that they are plagiarizing the content; nevertheless it is one’s own responsibility to clearly demarcate the differences between paraphrasing and quoting exact words and citing with proper references. At times, the authors knowingly borrow the ideas, contents from the other authors which constitutes blatant plagiarism. Sometimes, the authors resort to much more devious means such as salami-slicing where the authors extract small amounts of data in increments from the previously published articles.

If the suspected plagiarism is detected in a published article

The individual whoever has disclosed this information is advised to follow the process to effectively address the issue.
The extent of copying in the published article suspected of plagiarism is evaluated.
The Editorial Board members are intimated and asked for their valuable feedback.
The author for the article in question is contacted with supporting evidence and asked for a response.
If the authors are found guilty of plagiarism, REF Press publishes official retraction of the paper.
The publishers will not consider the author’s any publications in the future for a period of 5 years.
The authors are required to acknowledge that they are well aware of REF Press policy on plagiarism before they make article’s copyright transfer agreement.
Different types of plagiarism are explained based on extent, originality of the copied material, context, referencing, intention, author seniority and language. The Journal responses to plagiarism include educating authors, contacting authors’ institutions, issuing corrections and issuing retractions.
The Editor provides the following documentation in response to the plagiarized work:the description of the alleged misconduct; manuscript title; the list of the authors; title of ideas; list of creators and date of creation; copies of both the manuscripts; full name and address of the complainant.
The charge of the plagiarism, the supporting materials and the outcomes remain confidential and are known to only those who are involved in the review process.
The sanctions on the plagiarized manuscript include ban from the submission to REF Press for a period of time; and the author guilty of plagiarism holding the editorial office is removed. The authors are asked to write a letter of apology to the author of the plagiarized paper and admitting to the act of plagiarism. In the event of denial from the author of plagiarism charges, penalties are invoked for providing statutory relief and U.S. Copyright law allows a copyright owner to seek a maximum of $150,000 in damages upon a determination of willful infringement of copyright.

The Journal expects the authors to follow the ensuing guidelines:

The focus should be on ideas published in the prior works.
In Word-to-Word Copying, the authors are expected to ensure their works are properly italicized and indented, citations to include link to URLs.
Though the Journal adopts double-blind review, however proper attribution is provided.
The creative contribution of ideas, texts, analyzes presented in a paper which is under consideration for the publication are also cited in subsequent papers as a first source.
Using, duplicating and copying the empirical data that is employed in the previous published works must be properly referenced and cited.
When using the mathematical data from the previous works it is always advisable to re-use of notation for the consistency, re-use of variable definition is encouraged.
When in doubt, it is always best to cite the previous publications or describe the situation writing a cover letter to the editor.