The Romanian Journal of Indian Studies’s anti-plagiarism policy and procedure on preventing plagiarism in the studies published by the Journal:
The current document, in accordance with the Decision No. 82/4.01.2022 of the Administrative Council, the Decision No. 119/23.09.2021 of Babeş-Bolyai University’s Senate and the Decision No. 15823/14.11.2022 of the Administration Council, describes the procedure of the anti-plagiarism analysis of manuscripts received for publication and the use of plagiarism detection software within the editorial office of the Romanian Journal of Indian Studies.
The objective of the present policy is to comply with research ethics in all the publications of the Romanian Journal of Indian Studies.
Babeş-Bolyai University’s (henceforth BBU) anti-plagiarism policy aims to avoid intentional fraud (when certain data and information are used intentionally, without indicating their source by the person who publishes it) or the trap that some authors may fall into, when they take information from different sources without specifying them clearly and transparently, because of the mindset of sharing information online.
For the purposes of the present policy, BBU adopts the definition of plagiarism in Art. 4 of Law no. 206/2004 (“the appropriation of ideas, demonstrations, data, hypotheses, theories, results or scientific methods, regardless of the way they were obtained, presenting them as personal creation.”) Authors must be aware of and understand that the Romanian Journal of Indian Studies intents to prevent and sanction any form of plagiarism, as well as other forms of dishonest behavior, including, but not limited to, fabrication and/or falsification of data presented. Therefore, the authors submitting manuscripts for publication in the Romanian Journal of Indian Studies are informed that attempted plagiarism and/or any other fraudulent action may lead to the rejection of the manuscript from publication, the official notification of the higher education institution where the author is affiliated or to informing the academic community and the general public.
Following any notices of a possible plagiarism or other fraudulent actions regarding studies already published in the Romanian Journal of Indian Studies, and after a rigorous verification of such notices, the editorial office of the journal will take measures to notify all interested institutions, providing all necessary documents that provide evidence of plagiarism or other unethical scientific practices, and, at the same time, it will also publish the journal’s official position regarding the respective situation, on the website of the journal.
The anti-plagiarism analysis and consequent report are carried out by the editorial office of the Romanian Journal of Indian Studies, as described below.
The editorial office of Romanian Journal of Indian Studies will enter the text of the manuscript proposed for publication into the plagiarism detection software made available by BBU, within 30 days of receiving the manuscript. The report generated by the plagiarism detection software will then by analyzed by the editor-in-chief, and the invited editors of the issue. On the basis of these evaluations, an anti-plagiarism report will be created that will contain a list of documents identified as possible sources for certain fragments of the text and one or more similarity coefficient(s). Regardless of the alert threshold signaled by the plagiarism detection software, a qualitative analysis of the results of the automatic plagiarism detection will be performed, in accordance with the standards and specificities of the field. The manuscript will not be accepted for publication if the anti-plagiarism report shows that: (a) the unauthorised fragment(s) that were found in the manuscript are not justified and bear signs of plagiarism; or (b) the work contains intentional changes to the text, which indicate an attempt to conceal unauthorised use of fragments from someone else’s work.
Each contributor to Romanian Journal of Indian Studies will complete and sign a Declaration of originality, stating that “The article has not been published and is not being submitted or considered for publication elsewhere. The text, illustrations, or any other materials included in the article contains no violation of any existing copyright and does not infringe any rights of third parties.”
For general conceptual guidelines regarding plagiarism, the Romanian Journal of Indian Studies recommends the following:
- Law no. 206 of May 27, 2004 updated version (http://legislatie.just.ro/Public/DetaliiDocument/52457).
- Avoiding Plagiarism, published by Harvard University (https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/what-constitutes-plagiarism).
- Plagiarism: Decision making & dealing with grey-zones across academic fields
Plagiarism (https://researcheracademy.elsevier.com/publication-process/ethics/plagiarism) published by Elsevier.
- The Strategy for Preventing and Combating the Phenomenon of Plagiarism at Babeș-Bolyai University
(https://doctorat.ubbcluj.ro/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Strategie-Anti-plagiat-UBB-3.pdf) and
the Ethical Committee’s Guide for Students on Academic Honesty and Ethics
- COPE Recommendations on Publication Ethics
(https://publicationethics.org/).
- Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing).