Plagiarism & Duplicate Publication

The Journal treats plagiarism and misattribution as matters of research integrity. Plagiarism may arise through deliberate conduct, misunderstanding, oversight, or inadequate attribution, and the identification of a potential concern is not, by itself, an accusation or finding of misconduct: it opens an assessment of the circumstances, evidence, extent, and significance of the concern. The Journal applies this standard consistently, and works constructively with Authors, particularly first-time and early-career researchers, to resolve genuine attribution issues while maintaining a high-quality, ethical publication record.

The Journal defines plagiarism as the intentional or unintentional use, reproduction, appropriation, or presentation of another person's intellectual, creative, technical, or scholarly work without appropriate attribution, in a way that may give the impression that the material or contribution originates with the submitting Author. Plagiarism may concern text, ideas, figures, images, references, author information, mathematical or technical material, code, datasets, statistics, quotations, media, or other scholarly content. It may also include substantial unattributed reuse of an Author's own previous work where this creates a misleading impression of originality.

The absence of an intention to misrepresent does not remove the requirement to address the underlying attribution or originality concern. Intent and circumstances form part of the Journal's assessment.

Authors must provide appropriate attribution for the intellectual, technical, creative, and scholarly contributions on which their work relies, including material that is directly reproduced, paraphrased, summarised, adapted, transformed, or incorporated into a new presentation. This extends to text, quotations, ideas, and interpretations; figures, tables, and other visual material; data, statistics, datasets, code, and technical developments; mathematical models and specialised methods; references and bibliographic information; and previously published work by the Authors or others.

Established terminology, standard equations, and other commonly referenced material must still be attributed where a relevant source, originator, or standard can reasonably be identified; material is not exempt from attribution because it is widely known within a discipline. Reproduction under an open licence, or the public availability of a figure, image, or dataset, does not remove this requirement, and Authors must identify adapted material accordingly, including through wording such as "adapted from" where relevant. This standard applies equally to material obtained, extracted, transformed, or summarised using AI systems or similar tools: the use of AI does not transfer responsibility for attribution away from the Author.

This policy operates alongside the Journal's Preprints & Conference Proceedings policy. A preprint is not treated as the version of record, and reliance on a preprint does not, by itself, constitute duplicate publication under this policy. That distinction does not diminish a preprint's standing as another researcher's original work: where a submission draws on, builds upon, or is informed by a preprint, Authors must attribute and cite it to the fullest extent reasonably available to them, in the same way as any other scholarly source.

Authors must disclose material that has previously been published, accepted, submitted elsewhere, or otherwise made available, where it has a substantive relationship with the manuscript submitted to the Journal, including substantial reuse of an Author's own previous work where the relationship is not made clear. Where a work has already been published in substance and this comes to the Journal's attention without prior disclosure, this is treated as duplicate publication: a distinct form of misconduct from plagiarism, engaging misrepresentation and copyright considerations rather than misattribution. Every Author named on a submission is accountable for the originality and disclosure of that submission, and the Journal is not accountable for a duplicate publication that an Author did not disclose.

The Journal assesses manuscripts before peer review as part of its editorial quality-control and research-integrity process, using established editorial-grade plagiarism and similarity-checking software where potential unattributed material, substantial textual overlap, or inappropriate reuse is identified. A similarity result does not itself establish plagiarism or determine Author intent; it identifies material for editorial assessment. Where a concern is suspected, the Journal assesses it individually, considering:

• The nature and extent of the material concerned, and whether attribution was provided;
• Whether an identifiable source exists, and the relationship between the submitted work and that source;
• Whether the material originated from the Authors' own previous work;
• The significance of the material to the manuscript; and
• Any explanation or evidence the Authors provide, and the potential effect on originality and research integrity.

Lack of intent does not, by itself, resolve the underlying concern. Intent is considered as part of the assessment, and the outcome is determined by the evidence and circumstances of the individual case. Following assessment, the Journal will reach one of three outcomes:

• Revise: where the concern can appropriately be addressed before peer review, Authors will be asked to revise the manuscript, correct attribution, provide clarification, or otherwise resolve the identified issue.
• Reject: where plagiarism, substantial unattributed reuse, or duplicate publication is established and the manuscript is unsuitable for publication, the submission will be rejected.
• Escalate: where the concern is serious, complex, repeated, disputed, or potentially connected to other submissions or publications, the matter will be escalated for further investigation under the Journal's research integrity procedures. Where the evidence warrants it, this may include an immediate restriction or ban on further submissions.

Where a serious concern relates to previously published work, the Journal may undertake further inspection of the relevant publications. Any correction, retraction, or other post-publication action will be based on the evidence relating to the integrity of the relevant published record.