Plagiarism Policy
Table of content
Statement and policy
Similarity level
Plagiarism, similarity, and paraphrasing
Additional information
Statement and policy
Community Empowerment (CE) applies Zero tolerance towards plagiarism and therefore establishes the following policy stating specific actions (penalties) when plagiarism is identified in an article that is submitted for publication in CE.
Definition: Plagiarism involves the "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work."
Policy: Papers must be original, unpublished, and not pending publication elsewhere. Any material taken verbatim from another source needs to be clearly identified as different from the present original text by (1) indentation, (2) use of quotation marks, and (3) identification of the source.
Any text of an amount exceeding fair use standards (herein defined as more than two or three sentences or the equivalent thereof) or any graphic material reproduced from another source requires permission from the copyright holder and, if feasible, the original author(s) and also requires identification of the source; e.g., previous publication.
All submitted papers will be checked for their similarity by Turnitin.
When plagiarism is identified, the Principal Editor responsible for the review of this paper and will agree on measures according to the extent of plagiarism detected in the paper in agreement with the following guidelines:
Similarity level
CE practices Zero tolerance towards plagiarism. We use Turnitin to evaluate the similarity index and then the editor decides the case of possible plagiarism (Similarity report will be provided to the author). The Editorial Board has passed the following actions:
1. Similarity Index above 40%: Article Rejected (due to poor citation and/or poor paraphrasing, article outright rejected, NO RESUBMISSION accepted).
2. Similarity Index (15-40%): Send to the author for improvement (provide correct citations to all places of similarity and do good paraphrasing even if the citation is provided).
3. Similarity index Less than 15%: Accepted or citation improvement may be required (proper citations must be provided to all outsourced texts).
In cases 2 and 3: The authors should revise the article carefully, add required citations, and do good paraphrasing to outsourced text. And resubmit the article with a new Turnitin report showing NO PLAGIARISM and similarity less than 15%.
Plagiarism, similarity, and paraphrasing
Additional information
It is understood that the authors are responsible for the contents of the papers they send because they confirm the paper's originality statement before submission and have read this plagiarism policy. If the second case of severe plagiarism by the same author(s) is identified, a decision on the measures to be enforced will be made by the Editorial board. The author(s) might be forbidden to submit further articles forever.
This policy applies also to material reproduced from another publication by the same author(s). If an author uses text or figures that have previously been published, the corresponding paragraphs or figures should be identified and the previous publication referenced. It is understood that in the case of a review paper or a paper of a tutorial nature much of the material was previously published.
The author should identify the source of the previously published material and obtain permission from the original author and the publisher. If an author submits a manuscript to Community Empowerment (CE) with significant overlap with a manuscript submitted to another journal simultaneously, and this overlap is discovered during the review process or after the publications of both papers, the editor of the other journal is notified and the case is treated as a severe plagiarism case. Significant overlap means the use of identical or almost identical figures and identical or slightly modified text for one half or more of the paper. For self-plagiarism of less than one-half of the paper but more than one-tenth of the paper, the case shall be treated as intermediate plagiarism. If self-plagiarism is confined to the methods section, the case shall be considered as minor plagiarism.
If an author uses some of his previously published material to clarify the presentation of new results, the previously published material shall be identified and the difference to the present publication shall be mentioned. Permission to republish must be obtained from the copyright holder. In the case of a manuscript that was originally published in conference proceedings and then is submitted for publication in CE either in identical or in expanded form, the authors must identify the name of the conference proceedings and the date of the publication and obtain permission to republish from the copyright holder. The editor may decide not to accept this paper for publication. However, an author shall be permitted to use material from an unpublished presentation, including visual displays, in a subsequent journal publication. In the case of a publication being submitted, that was originally published in another language, the title, date, and journal of the original publication must be identified by the authors, and the copyright must be obtained.