Plagiarism Policy

The Constitutional Review editorial board upholds a strict stance against plagiarism and has established the following policy outlining specific actions (penalties) for cases where plagiarism or textual similarities are detected in submitted manuscripts.

To ensure originality, Constitutional Review utilizes Turnitin software to check for similarities in article manuscripts and final versions before publication. The journal permits a maximum similarity threshold of 15%. If a manuscript exceeds this limit, it will be returned to the author for revision and resubmission.

a. Definition:

Plagiarism is defined as "the use or close imitation of another author's language and ideas, presenting them as one's original work."

b. Policy:

All submissions must be original, unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Any directly quoted material must be clearly distinguished from the original text through (1) indentation, (2) quotation marks, and (3) proper citation of the source.

Text exceeding fair use standards—defined as more than two or three sentences or equivalent—or any reproduced graphic material requires explicit permission from the copyright holder and, if possible, from the original author(s), along with proper source attribution.

In cases where plagiarism is suspected, Constitutional Review follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, using a flowchart to determine the appropriate course of action. The Editor-in-Chief will evaluate the severity of the plagiarism and impose penalties based on the following levels:

c. Levels of Plagiarism and Corresponding Actions:

Minor Plagiarism

  • Definition: A short sentence or paragraph from another work is used without proper citation, but no substantial data or ideas are taken.
  • Action: Authors receive a warning and must revise the manuscript with appropriate citations.

Intermediate Plagiarism

  • Definition: A significant section of text, data, or ideas is used without proper attribution.
  • Action: The manuscript is immediately rejected.

Severe Plagiarism

  • Definition: A substantial portion of the manuscript contains copied content, including original research results (data, equations, formulations, theories, etc.), ideas, or methods from other publications.
  • Action: The manuscript is rejected, and the authors are banned from submitting future articles to the journal.