Plagiarism Policy

PRISMA applies a zero-tolerance principle toward plagiarism as a violation of academic integrity.

All manuscripts must be original works and comply with standards of scholarly citation.

Plagiarism includes the use of another party’s ideas, text, data, images, research findings, or other work without proper acknowledgment of the source.

PRISMA also prohibits undisclosed self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, non-transparent reuse of the same data, and simultaneous submission of a manuscript to multiple journals.

Proposed similarity-checking standards are as follows:

1. Similarity checking is conducted using Turnitin, iThenticate, or another similarity-detection tool designated by the journal management.
2. The overall manuscript similarity index should be below 20%.
3. Similarity from any single source should not exceed 2%.
4. Editors conduct a substantive review of detected similarity sources.
5. Legitimate quotations, references, technical terms, and standard methods are evaluated in context.

Similarity thresholds are an initial screening tool and are not automatic proof of the presence or absence of plagiarism.

Editors may request revisions, conduct further checks, or reject a manuscript when a violation is identified.

A manuscript with a low similarity index may still be rejected if it contains substantive plagiarism.