Plagiarism Guidelines

Plagiarism Guidelines

The Asian Journal of Qualitative Research (AJQR) uses Turnitin software to highlight text overlap between a submitted manuscript and existing literature. Occasionally, our Editorial Office will send authors a similarity report to assess whether there is inappropriate re-use of wording. The report will contain a calculation of the overall percentage of reuse. This number should be taken with caution. A high percentage is not necessarily unacceptable, but only an indication that there might be plagiarism or redundancy. It is important to look through the report to see the sources of overlap and where sections of overlap occur. Currently, AJQR follows the HEC (Pakistan) policies regarding Turnitin Originality Report and Plagiarism, enforcing a zero-tolerance policy on plagiarism. AJQR aims for original manuscripts with a Turnitin Originality Report of 20% or below.

Things to Consider:

  • Nature of Overlap: Are the similarities fragmentary or in blocks? Are complete sentences or paragraphs copied from previous works?
  • Location of Overlap: Duplication of background ideas in the introduction or common methods may be considered less significant than duplication of the discussion or conclusions.
  • Data Duplication: This is almost never acceptable without appropriate citation.
  • Citation: Was the source of the text overlap cited and discussed?
  • Authorship: Was the source written by one or more of the same authors as the AJQR submission? If so, the concern might be with copyright or redundant publication rather than plagiarism. Some overlap is allowed, e.g., with the authors’ own preprint or thesis, if those sources are mentioned.
  • Software Accuracy: Could the software have miscalculated the similarity by including large chunks of text that are properly contained within quotation marks or by flagging similarities in the references?

If the level of similarity requires attention, authors may be requested to rewrite sections of their manuscript and cite any missing references prior to peer review. If a manuscript is deemed excessively plagiarized, it will be rejected outright.