Plagiarism Policy

International Journal of Discovery in Social Sciences (ISSN: 3105-6288) is published by the SCOPUA (Scientific Collaborative Online Publishing Universal Academy), and uses Turnitin to verify the originality of submitted manuscripts. All submitted manuscripts are scanned with Turnitin to calculate the similarity index or plagiarism. A manuscript with less than a 19% similarity index can be accepted for publication.

Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else's work as his or her own. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. This can range from getting an identical paper published in multiple journals to salami-slicing, where authors add small amounts of new data to a previous paper.

IJDSS is committed to promoting and disseminating original research work relating to the field of Law and Legal Studies. Plagiarism in any form cannot be tolerated by IJDSS at any stage, as it shows unethical publishing behaviour. All selected manuscripts will be screened for plagiarism using Turnitin software. The manuscript in which the plagiarism is detected is handled based on the extent of the plagiarism.

In the case of suspected plagiarism in a published article:

• A specific process is followed to manage a case of plagiarism. IJDSS follows the guidelines contained in the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) flowchart.
• The person who reported is informed about the process to be followed.
• The articles are compared to check the degree of copying.
• All editors are informed and asked for their comments.
• The corresponding author of the article in question is contacted with documentary evidence of the case of plagiarism and is asked for a response.

If the author(s) are found guilty of plagiarism

• The publisher (SCOPUA) and the authors of the plagiarized article will be informed. IJDSS publishes an official retraction of the paper.