The editorial team of the Pakistan Journal of Medicine and Dentistry (PJMD) is committed to maintaining high standards and integrity of published scientific content. PJMD follows/perceives the ICMJE, PMDC, and HEC plagiarism policy for all types of plagiarism. For this purpose, the Plagiarism policy of PJMD will be applied while handling the manuscripts to determine the originality of the manuscripts.
Turnitin software is used for screening submitted manuscripts and similarity index (SI) <16% according to HEC and Ziauddin University plagiarism policy. The journal does not entertain plagiarism like unacknowledged/unappreciated copying or an attempt to mislead the perception of original work, whether of ideas, text, results, images, or figures. Text recycling, the reuse of parts of text from an author’s previous research publication (self-plagiarism) or of another’s work without appropriate attribution and no citation to the other research work will also be considered plagiarized. PJMD does not consider such manuscripts for publication.
The disciplinary committee of PJMD comprised of the editorial board and the editor-in-chief will deal with cases of plagiarism or publication misconduct. the journal will contact the authors’ institutions, funders, and appropriate bodies for necessary actions. On confirmation of misconduct correction or retraction of the publication will be done.
Instances of plagiarism often manifest in these ways:
- Directly appropriating someone else’s work and presenting it as one’s own.
- Self-plagiarism, where authors recycle their previously published material.
- Exclusions during plagiarism checks should be limited to:
- Quotations
- Bibliographic references
- Phrases
- Mathematical / Statistical formulas
- Institutional names or departments
Guidelines for Authors Regarding Plagiarism:
- Plagiarism Identification and Correction: If plagiarism is identified during manuscript submission or any processing phase, authors receive alerts and are requested to rework the content or cite references properly. Manuscripts found with 16% or above plagiarism risk rejection and necessitate revision and resubmission.
- Reporting Plagiarism Instances: Scholars can contribute to the scientific community by reporting instances of plagiarism in any journal, providing comprehensive details for appropriate action by the involved editorial offices.
- Post-Publication Plagiarism Investigation: In cases of post-publication plagiarism detection, PJMD conducts a comprehensive investigation. Authors are contacted, and the plagiarized content is marked in the PDF. Depending on the severity, a formal retraction of the paper may occur.
- Handling Publications in Other Languages: Authors must disclose original publication details and secure copyright permissions for publications in another language. Translations may be accepted with proper citation or if the content is entirely rephrased.
- Self-Plagiarism Guidelines: Self-plagiarism, reproducing significant sections of copyrighted work without citation, is not permissible. However, referencing prior copyrighted work is an exception.
- Impact on Research Ethics: Plagiarism significantly undermines research ethics and devalues scholarly work.
PJMD’s Appeal to Authors: PJMD earnestly calls upon scholars to prioritise integrity and accountability in producing plagiarism-free manuscripts.