“The Animal Biology” scientific journal accepts and publishes only original works that haven’t been published before (in any language) and aren’t pending in other scientific journals. The editor pays great attention to plagiarism/self-plagiarism prevention.
For detection of plagiarism or multiple/redundant publications the editor uses the StrikePlagiarism service. Revealing a high level of plagiarism or other ethical malpractices can result in manuscript rejection or article retraction if already published.
Plagiarism before publication
Editors, members of the Editorial Council and reviewers during the process of manuscript evaluation should pay attention to any overlaps with previously published works, suspicions about usage of parts of other authors’ publications without proper permissions and citations. If plagiarism was revealed on any stage of article preparation (manuscript acquiring, peer-review process, acceptance, editing, page proof stage) the editor sends to the author a request to rewrite or replace these fragments and/or make relevant citations. If plagiarism is more than 25% of the entire article, the manuscript can be rejected with notification to the author and his/her employing institution.
Policy of checking manuscripts for plagiarism
The manuscripts are handled based on the extent of revealed plagiarism. Its percentage is calculated by software and also assessed manually. The manuscript containing <25% plagiarism is immediately sent back to the author for the appropriate refinement. The manuscript containing >25% is rejected with no editorial or peer review. In such cases the author is recommended to revise the plagiarized parts and resubmit paper as a fresh manuscript.
Plagiarism after publication
The editor scrutinizes every plagiarism report for already published articles. If the fact of plagiarism is confirmed, the editors inform the author’s institution-employer and funding agencies. Such publication is still available in journal archive with the proper marking on the article web page and on every page of the PDF file. If the plagiarism is extensive or other severe publication misconduct is revealed, the paper can be officially retracted.
Self-plagiarism
Plagiarism concept is also applied to verbatim copying of elements from the author’s own works. There are cases in the publication practice when the author compiles his manuscript using the parts of his previous works with only slight changes. Most editors and reviewers consider self-plagiarism to be unethical. If the manuscript has once been published, the copyright belongs to the publisher and the author is not allowed to use the same text or other elements. We recommend in such cases to reduce the use of own works to single short citations with obligatory citing appropriate references.
Recommendations for avoiding plagiarism
We recommend to reduce using direct quotes and not to copy the text from the source verbatim but to paraphrase or summarize other authors’ statements and conclusions with obligatory citing appropriate references. If the manuscript contains tables, figures, schemes or extensive citations from other papers, the author should have a permission for it and to place the source citation and the permission for its use at the foot of each figure.
The common recommendations for avoiding plagiarism:
● words taken verbatim from a source should be put in quotation marks as a quote;
● use single marks for a quotation within a quotation (“ ‘’ ”);
● change no part of quotation within the context of the sentence;
● use ellipses (a space and three periods, …) for a part of the quotation omitted;
● use brackets around words added to the citation.
