Originality and Citation Integrity

Submissions must be original and not under consideration by another journal. Authors must disclose relevant preprints, theses, conference versions, translations and overlapping publications so that editors can assess the relationship.

Plagiarism, undisclosed substantial text recycling, duplicate publication, fabricated or altered evidence, invented legal authorities, manipulated images, false review identities and citation manipulation are unacceptable.

Citations must support the argument and accurately represent the cited material. Authors and reviewers must not add irrelevant references to increase an individual’s, institution’s or journal’s citation count. Reviewers should explain why suggested references are relevant; self-citation is subject to the same standard.

Editors may use similarity screening where available, together with source checks and editorial judgement. A similarity percentage alone does not establish plagiarism, and a low score does not establish originality. Quotations, standard legal language and properly attributed references require contextual assessment.

Authors should disclose related work at submission and provide copies when requested. Corrections to an existing publication must be made transparently rather than by presenting the same work as a new article.