The journal of Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Reports (CMBR) adheres to the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). We accept all terms and conditions of COPE about plagiarism and in case, any attempt of plagiarism is brought to our attention accompanied by convincing evidence, we act based on flowcharts and workflows determined in COPE.

The Editorial Boards of the journal of Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Reports (CMBR) take the necessary measures to examine the incoming articles on their originality, reliability of contained information, and correct use of citations. The Editorial Board of the journal acknowledges that plagiarism is unacceptable and therefore establishes the following policies that state-specific actions (penalties) if plagiarism is identified in a manuscript submitted for publication in the journal.

Authors should ensure that they submit only entirely original works. If they have used the work and/or statements of others, this must be appropriately cited or referenced. Plagiarism in any form, including quotations or paraphrasing of substantial parts of another’s article (without attribution), “passing off” another’s article as the author’s own, or claiming results from research conducted by others, constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Manuscripts that are a compilation of previously published materials of other authors (without their own creative and authoring interpretation) are not accepted for publication. It is unacceptable to use “unfair” text borrowing and assigning research results not belonging to the authors of the submitted manuscript. The authors must ensure that the submitted manuscript:

- describes completely the original work;

- is not plagiarism;

- has not been published before in any language;

- the information used or words from other publications are appropriately indicated by reference or indicated in the text.

Existing copyright laws and conventions must be observed. Materials protected by copyright (for example, tables, figures, or large quotations) should only be reproduced with the permission of their owner.

Similarity Rate in CMBR Journal:

The similarity score shows the percentage of plagiarized content in a research paper. All manuscripts must be free from plagiarism contents. Manuscripts submitted to the Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Reports (CMBR) will be screened for plagiarism using similarity check and plagiarism detection tools. All authors are suggested to use plagiarism detection software to check the similarity before submitting their manuscript to the journal. Editors check the plagiarism detection of manuscripts in the CMBR using iThenticate (www.ithenticate.com) (Permissible level of plagiarism is 15%) to be assured about their originality and then rigorously peer-reviewed by international reviewers.

The similarity percentage is further checked keeping the following important points in view:

Low Text Similarity:

The text of every submitted manuscript is checked using the Content Tracking mode in iThenticate. The Content Tracking mode ensures that manuscripts with an overall low percentage similarity (but may have a higher similarity from a single source) are not overlooked. The acceptable limit for similarity of text from a single source is 3%. If the similarity level is above 3%, the manuscript is returned to the author for paraphrasing the text and citing the original source of the copied material.

It is important to mention that the text taken from different sources with an overall low similarity percentage will be considered as a plagiarized content if the majority of the article is a combination of copied material.

High Text Similarity:

There may be some manuscripts with an overall low similarity percentage, but a higher percentage from a single source. A manuscript may have less than 15% overall similarity but there may be 10% similar text taken from a single article. The similarity index in such cases is higher than the approved limit for a single source. Authors are advised to thoroughly rephrase the similar text and properly cite the original source to avoid plagiarism and copyright violation.

Types of Plagiarism

We all know that scholarly manuscripts are written after thorough review of previously published articles. It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content. These are:

  • Reproduction of others words, sentences, ideas or findings as one’s own without proper acknowledgment.
  • Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism. It is an author’s use of a previous publication in another paper without proper citation and acknowledgment of the original source.
  • Poor paraphrasing: Copying complete paragraphs and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.
  • Verbatim copying of text without putting quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.
  • Properly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered as unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language somewhere between paraphrasing and quoting are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and in both cases, cite the original source.
  • Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways. However, technical terms and sometimes standard procedures cannot be rephrased; therefore Editors must review these sections carefully before making a decision.

Responsibility of Authors for checking any similarity before submission:

All manuscripts must be free from plagiarism contents. All authors are suggested to use plagiarism detection software to do the similarity checking. Editors check the plagiarism detection of manuscripts in this journal by using Grammarly detection software (www.grammarly.com) and using iThenticate. The journal will immediately reject articles leading to plagiarism or self-plagiarism. The journal adheres to international practices of preventing plagiarism. Thus, all authors that submit their manuscripts to the journal must check that their academic work respects the copyrights of other scholars and avoids any plagiarism. Once the manuscript is submitted to the journal, the editorial board will assign a group of anti-plagiarism members to check the manuscript through various tools. If proof of plagiarism is found, the manuscript will be rejected immediately, and the Editorial Board will communicate with the author to demand an explanation and the amendment of the plagiarized content. If the author does not respond within a reasonable length of time or does not make the necessary adjustments, they will not be able to submit manuscripts to the journal for a period of five (5) years. If the Editorial Board has reason to believe that the manuscript was not drafted or researched in an ethical manner, the journal’s implemented code of ethics (Committee on Publication Ethics [Code of Conduct and Best Practices Guidelines for Journals Editors]) will be reviewed and acted accordingly.

Authors can adhere to the following steps to report plagiarism:

  • Inform the editor of the journal where a plagiarized article is published.
  • Send original and plagiarized articles with plagiarized parts highlighted.
  • If evidence of plagiarism is convincing, the editor should arrange for a disciplinary meeting.
  • The editor of the journal where the plagiarized article should communicate with the editor of the journal containing the original article to rectify the matter.
  • The plagiarist should be asked to explain.
  • In case of nonresponse in the stipulated time or an unsatisfactory explanation, the article should be permanently retracted.
  • The author should be blacklisted and debarred for submitting an article to a particular journal for at least 5 years.
  • The concerned head of the institution has to be notified.

The author bears the responsibility for checking whether the material submitted is subject to copyright or ownership rights, e.g., figures, tables, photographs, illustrations, trade literature, and data. The author will need to obtain permission to reproduce any such items and include these permissions with their final submission. Where use is so restricted, the editorial office and Publisher must be informed of the final submission of the material. Please add any necessary acknowledgments to the typescript, preferably in the form of an Acknowledgments section at the end of the article. Credit the source and copyright of photographs, figures, illustrations, etc. in the supplementary captions.

Plagiarism is an act intentionally or unintentionally in obtaining or trying to obtain credit or value for scientific work, by quoting part or all of the work and/or scientific work of other parties that are recognized as scientific works, without expressing the source appropriately and adequately. Therefore, manuscripts must be original, never published, and not in the process of waiting for publication elsewhere. Material taken verbally from other sources needs to be clearly identified so that it is different from the original text. If plagiarism is identified, the Editor-in-Chief is responsible for reviewing the manuscript and will approve the action according to the level of plagiarism detected, with the following guidelines.

 

Role of Reviewers in detecting the similarities in a manuscript:

We recommend reviewers in the peer review process thoroughly check and control the similarities and guide authors to avoid similarities with other published materials. It is the most important of reviewers and associate editors to check the files based on the screening done by the publisher.

 

What is the acceptance level of similarity in CMBR journal?

  • There is no pre-defined accepted level of similarity since any sentence in a research paper must be unique with new findings. We believe that science does not need to be repeated even as one sentence. 
  • In some cases, we don't accept those with more than a 15% similarity rate.
  • The EIC of the journal holds the highest responsibility to control and avoid plagiarism.

We are checking all manuscripts using iThenticate at least in 2 essential steps:

  1. Early submission: Our online system detects automatic submissions with high similarity rates and prevents submitting them.
  2. Before the primary stage of publishing: Just before starting the publishing process (during collection), we will check all accepted manuscripts another time.
  • The highest responsibility to control and avoid plagiarism is held by the EIC of the journal.
  • "Fast reject", "Reject", "Withdraw" and "Retraction" are our approaches for those articles with high similarity rates.
  • The journal will immediately reject papers leading to plagiarism or self-plagiarism. Whenever it is determined that the manuscript has not complied with the plagiarism rules, the article is rejected (before accepting) and if it has been published (after accepting), it will be removed from the published list and placed in the withdrawn list (returned articles because of Failure to observe plagiarism law).