Policy of Screening for Plagiarism

The International Journal of Digital Retail Management (IJDRM) maintains a strict zero tolerance towards plagiarism. It thus establishes the following policy outlining specific actions (penalties) to be taken when plagiarism is detected in an article submitted for publication in the International Journal of Digital Retail Management (IJDRM).

Definition: Plagiarism involves the "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's original work."

Policy: Articles must be original, not previously published, and not simultaneously under consideration for publication elsewhere. Any content directly borrowed from another source must be unmistakably distinguished from the current original text through (1) indentation, (2) quotation marks, and (3) proper citation of the source.

Any content that exceeds the fair use standard (defined as more than two or three sentences or their equivalent) or any visual material reproduced from another source necessitates permission from the copyright holder and, if possible, the original author(s). Additionally, the source must be identified, including any previous publication.

All submitted papers will undergo a similarity check using Turnitin.

Upon identifying plagiarism, the Principal Editor overseeing the paper review will determine appropriate actions based on the extent of plagiarism found, following these guidelines:

Similarity Level

International Journal of Digital Retail Management (IJDRM) maintains a zero-tolerance policy regarding plagiarism and employs Turnitin to assess the similarity index. The editor will decide the course of action based on the possibility of plagiarism (a similarity report will be provided to the author). The Editorial Board has established the following measures:

1. Similarity Index above 40%: Article Rejected (the article is rejected outright due to inadequate citation and/or paraphrasing, and no resubmission will be accepted).
2. Similarity Index (16-39%): Sent to the author for revision (authors must provide correct citations for all instances of similarity and engage in proper paraphrasing, even if citations are provided).
3. Similarity Index Less than 15%: Accepted or may require citation improvement (authors must ensure proper citations are provided for all externally sourced content).

In cases 2 and 3, Authors are expected to thoroughly revise the article, incorporate the necessary citations, and effectively paraphrase borrowed content. Subsequently, they should resubmit the article with a new Turnitin report demonstrating an absence of plagiarism and a similarity index of less than 15%.

Every manuscript submitted to the International Journal of Digital Retail Management (IJDRM) will undergo a Turnitin scan to check for similarities.