Anti-plagiarism policy

Plagiarism is committed when material in which the work of others (e.g., data, text, models, etc.) is presented as their own and without proper acknowledgment. Under this label there are various forms of plagiarism, for example (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4212376/):

Plagiarism of ideas: when an author uses the ideas of others and presents them as his/her own.

Plagiarism of text: taking a portion of text from a source without giving due credit to the author.

Mosaic plagiarism: when the author takes portions of text (words, statements) from a source and, without giving due credit, joins them with his/her own.

Self-plagiarism: when the author takes all or part of a work of his/her own and presents it as an unpublished product, or does not adequately cite the source of the information used.

The Editorial Board of the JPBS will seek to guarantee the originality of the published contributions. In order to achieve this aim, JPBS uses the Ithenticate software, which reports a percentage of coincidence between the evaluated text and other sources.

Concerning the percentage of coincidence tolerated, it is important to distinguish between legitimate coincidence (due, for example, to textual quotations) and plagiarism, strictly speaking. In the case of legitimate coincidences, it is desirable that such percentage does not exceed 20% (this is on the understanding that in certain areas, such as law, laws, and similar material are frequently presented verbatim). If this percentage is exceeded, the Editorial Board will evaluate the case and, if necessary, will contact the authors to request the appropriate adjustments.

On the other hand, no percentage of plagiarism will be tolerated. When it is detected that an article presents this problem, the authors of the article will be notified for clarification and, if not satisfactory (or not received in the requested time), the article will be rejected (see Process for identifying and dealing with allegations of research misconduct for more details on the measures taken by the JPBS in this and other types of misconduct).

Since plagiarism is a frequent problem that undermines the scientific ethos, we urge authors to be extremely meticulous about it. Some good tips for avoiding such practice can be found in the following resources:

Plagiarism: a good practice guide (https://etico.iiep.unesco.org/es/resource/plagiarism-good-practice-guide)

Plagiarism (https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/plagiarism)