Plagiarisme and Restraction

Plagiarisme and Retraction Policy

Journal  NIAGARA Editorial board recognizes that plagiarism is not acceptable and therefore establishes the following policy stating specific actions (penalties) upon identification of plagiarism/similarities in articles submitted for publication.

Journal  NIAGARA will use turnitin.com, Google-based search engines, journals databases, and other online plagiarism detection tool. Depending on the level of originality and similarities with other documents, the managing editor will decide on whether to immediately reject the manuscripts, contact authors for further clarifications, or to proceed to the peer-review process. A maximum of 25% of similarities is allowed for the submitted papers. Should we find more than 25% of the similarity index, the article will be returned to the author for correction and resubmission.

Policy:

Papers must be original, unpublished, and not pending publication elsewhere. Any material taken verbatim from another source needs to be clearly identified as different from the present original text by (1) indentation, (2) use of quotation marks, and (3) identification of the source.

Any text of an amount exceeding fair use standards (herein defined as more than two or three sentences or the equivalent thereof) or any graphic material reproduced from another source requires permission from the copyright holder and, if feasible, the original author(s) and also requires identification of the source; e.g., previous publication.

When plagiarism is identified, the Editor in Chief responsible for the review of this paper and will agree on measures according to the extent of plagiarism detected in the paper in agreement with the following guidelines:

Level of Plagiarism

Minor:

A short section of another article is plagiarized without any significant data or idea taken from the other paper.

Action: A warning is given to the authors and a request to change the text and properly cite the original article is made

Intermediate:

A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized without proper citation to the original paper

Action: The submitted article is rejected and the authors are forbidden to submit further articles for one year

Severe:

A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized that involves reproducing original results or ideas presented in another publication

Action: The paper is rejected and the authors are forbidden to submit further articles for five years.

Retraction and/or Corrections

Authors are discouraged from withdrawing submitted manuscripts after it is in the publication process (review, copyedit, layout, etc.,).

Journal NIAGARA editors shall consider retracting a publication if:

  • They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of a major error (eg, miscalculation or experimental error) or as a result of fabrication (eg, of data) or falsification (eg, image manipulation)
  • It constitutes plagiarism
  • The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (ie, cases of redundant publication)
  • It contains material or data without authorization for use
  • Copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (eg, libel, privacy)
  • It reports unethical research
  • It has been published solely on the basis of a compromised or manipulated peer review process
  • The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (a.k.a. conflict of interest) that, in the view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers.

Notices of retraction would:

  • Be linked to the retracted article wherever possible (ie, in all online versions
  • Clearly identify the retracted article (eg, by including the title and authors in the retraction heading or citing the retracted article)
  • Be clearly identified as a retraction (ie, distinct from other types of correction or comment)
  • Be published promptly to minimize the harmful effects
  • Be freely available to all readers (ie, not behind access barriers or available only to subscribers)