Plagiarism Policy

Journal of Quality Assurance in Agricultural Sciences (JQAAS)

We demand full research compliance within our pre-defined ethical framework. In case of deviation from this framework (either before publication, during processing, or post-publication), the editorial team will take necessary actions to stop this from happening according to our Misconduct Policy and Plagiarism Policy.

Text plagiarism is defined as the copying of text, data and other creative work (e.g. tables, figures and graphs) and submission as original research without proper or prior acknowledgement to the original research. Being members of iThenticate/Cross-Check and Turnitin, we assess text plagiarism upon submission of every document. Any document containing text identity more than 15% (as defined by several scholarly associations), the manuscript is returned to authors along with a plagiarism report. Authors are given the opportunity to revise the document and resubmit the manuscript.

Stealing of ideas and the use of figures, tables, and artwork is considered misconduct. The Editorial Office strictly monitors any obvious fraudulent data prior to the review process and if plagiarism is detected at this stage or later, the manuscript will be rejected and will not be reconsidered in any journal published independently. Depending upon the severity of the misconduct, the publisher may contact the author(s)’ institution or refereed ethics committee. On rare occasions, if the Editor has serious concerns about the ethics of a study, the manuscript may be rejected on ethical grounds, even if approval from an ethics committee has been obtained. If the authors want to retract the article, the editorial office should be informed of their decision. By all means, articles are accepted not on business or political gain but on intellectual and ethical standards.

At the moment if any article already been published in the JQAAS database is subjected to be plagiarized, JQAAS immediately after the report will constitute a fact-finding committee (FFC) in order to investigate and look into the matter. After the outcome of the investigation confirmed that the manuscript is plagiarized with already published works JQAAS shall at any cost support the original author and publication without any restriction or consideration of the publisher, leading to the following action (any or all) or maybe pursue for recommended action by FFC:

  1. The editorial office of JQAAS shall immediately contact the director/dean/head of the college, institution or organization concerned or the vice-chancellor of the university to which the author(s) is (are) associated to take stern action against the author under query.
  2. JQAAS shall immediately delete the PDF file of the plagiarized manuscript already published from the journal website and along with suspending all corresponding links to the full-text article. In addition, the term “Plagiarized Manuscript” shall also be quoted with the name of the published article.
  3. JQAAS shall restrict and block author account with the journal for all future submissions at least for 3 -10 years or maybe forever.
  4. Any other action, as recommended by the committee or deemed appropriate to the instantaneous case or as decided by the Editorial Board occasionally.

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Plagiarism
All received manuscripts are processed through “Turnitin,” and manuscripts with a Similarity Index of more than 18% will not be processed. as Pakistan HEC policy.