Ethical Principles of Publishing Papers
The Journal of Petroleum Science and Technology has always been focusing on publishing new and innovative works and has prevented the publication of fake research and plagiarism. To this end, during 7 years of experience, this journal has only published original papers derived from the original research of scientists. Moreover, to protect researchers’ rights even more and avoid plagiarism, a manuscript submission form must be completed, signed, and submitted by the authors when submitting papers. They must meet the following commitments:
- All the authors have made contributions to the work and all the people who have contributed to the research are listed as authors and/or acknowledged.
- The manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere and/or it is not being submitted to any other journals, while it is submitted to the Journal of Petroleum Science and Technology.
- All the ethical and moral principles related to any relevant companies, organizations, universities, etc. have been met in the preparation of this manuscript and the associated research.
Moreover, as a guideline to the authors, some kinds of plagiarism and the methods of preventing plagiarism are summarized below.
Plagiarism
When someone uses another person’s words, ideas, or work and pretends they are their own is called plagiarism. Using others’ work by referring to them is not called plagiarism as long as the context is properly paraphrased. Unfortunately, because of the widespread usage of the Internet and the increase in the number of papers being published, plagiarism has become one of the common problems in this field. Students, researchers, and university professors are all warned to avoid any ambiguity in their manuscripts and clear any points. They must also refer to any data taken from others’ works. The journal also takes measures to check for the possible signs of plagiarism.
Kinds of Plagiarism
Unconscious Plagiarism
This type of plagiarism is mainly because of the lack of knowledge in addressing others’ work and using techniques like refereeing, quotations, and paraphrasing.
Conscious Plagiarism
This kind of plagiarism happens when some parts of the manuscript have been copied from others’ works without mentioning the references. Another serious way of this type of plagiarism is when somebody copies the whole work (paper) of others and submit it as a new paper in his/her own name(s). Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) will impose severe penalties for the conscious plagiarism.
Conscious plagiarism happens at different levels:
1. Word plagiarism
- “Copy & Paste”: this is the simplest way of plagiarism which can simply be detected.
- Disguise: this is usually done when the authors are trying to copy the same concept of others work by just paraphrasing and rephrasing to cover the appearance of their plagiarism. Although the appearance is changed due to rephrasing, the concept is still similar to the original work.
- Bad Citation: this level of plagiarism cannot be detected by primary checking and need reviewing of the work by editors and reviewers in the same fields. The authors usually use incorrect references to mislead the reviewers and journals.
2. Structure
- Mosaic: authors tries to change the structure of the manuscript context by changing the sentences and adding some parts to others’ work, while they do not change the concept.
- Multiple Sources: the authors use different works and merge similar parts to prepare their own manuscript without referring to the works they have used. Usually, different structures used in different works make this type of plagiarism detectable by editors and reviewers.
- Plagiarism of Idea: is using others idea and research methods and/or techniques without permission and citation.
- Authorship: adding the name of people who have not contributed to the work is also a type of plagiarism. This is usually done to use others’ reputation in the work to affect the review process and reviewers comments.
- Plagiarism of self: this happens when authors use their previously published methods, techniques, etc. in their work without citing their previous paper. Since the copyright of any published paper is given to the journal in which the paper is published, any next usage of that paper even by the same authors should be cited.
Preventing Plagiarism
Authors can use the following comments to improve the quality of their papers as well avoiding plagiarism:
- In case of using the work of other researchers, organizations, etc., author should make sure that they have the proper permission;
- Purchasing papers, thesis, dissertations, or any other reports and using the data included in your manuscript is also considered a kind of plagiarism;
- Avoiding any unnecessary data copying;
- Making a copy of the references used for your own records so that in the future you can refer to for any possible claim on your manuscript;
- Paraphrasing should be done by rewriting the concept of the main text; rephrasing the same text using different synonyms is not considered a suitable paraphrasing and can be considered as plagiarism. Moreover, the text paraphrased should be definitely cited;
- Any data, information, paraphrased text form the work of others must be properly cited;
- Citation should be done properly and exactly after the context borrowed. General citation at the end of each paragraph, which usually refers to different references, is not acceptable. To this end, each piece of the manuscript which refers to a different reference can be highlighted in the draft version and finally cited properly;
- Citation must be done according to the format provided by the journal to which the manuscript is submitted;
- In case of cross references, as seen in the review papers, authors should cite the original work instead of the review paper to avoid any ambiguity.
Software checking plagiarism
All the above software packages lack a database of manuscripts and only use search engines for plagiarism checking.
The below packages use a powerful databases which include a huge number of papers. Thus they are more credible in assessing the plagiarism:
Viper (www.sconmyessay.com)
The software should be installed (only available on Windows operating system) and a user account must be created for the analysis of plagiarism.
Thenticate (www.ithenticate.com)
Thenticate is professional software for plagiarism checking which is used by a large number of researchers and publishers around the world; the software provides a detailed report on the sections of a manuscript copied from others’ work.
Thenticate is the leading provider of professional plagiarism detection and prevention technology used worldwide by scholarly publishers and research institutions to ensure the originality of written work before publication. iThenticate helps editors, authors and researchers prevent misconduct by comparing manuscripts against its database of over 50 billion web pages and 130 million content items, including 40 million works from 590 scholarly publisher participants of CrossCheck, a service offered by CrossRef and powered by iThenticate software. iThenticate is developed by Turnitin, the leader in plagiarism and originality checking for educational institutions worldwide.
Analysis Steps
- Buying credits and creating a user account;
- Uploading the manuscript;
- Results extraction and evaluating the percentage of similarity;
- Analyzing the similarities and their submission to the authors;
- Deciding about the doubtful cases having a high percentage of similarity according to the ethics of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).