Plagiarism as a form of scientific misconduct has been on the rise in recent times. Defined by the US Office of Research Integrity as “the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit”, the increase in plagiarism is due not only to all too human failings, but also to the ease with which the emergence of the Internet has made such misconduct possible. Compared to earlier generations, training of students today seems to not convey a clear understanding of what is right and what is not in such matters.

The editors of all the journals of the Indian Academy of Sciences take a very serious view of any evidence of plagiarism including self-plagiarism in manuscripts submitted to them. Every reasonable effort will be made to investigate any allegations of plagiarism brought to their attention, as well as instances that come up during the peer review process. Such behaviour when proven beyond doubt is unacceptable, and will be suitably exposed. Self-plagiarism will be treated just as seriously.

Upon submission of a manuscript to any of the Academy journals, the author (or the Corresponding Author on behalf of all authors) will be required to sign a statement confirming that the work is original, that it has not been submitted elsewhere, the new results are the authors’ own findings, and all material taken from different sources has been appropriately acknowledged.

Upon acceptance of a manuscript for publication, the author, or the Corresponding author representing all the authors and with their concurrence, must submit signed acceptance of authorship of the paper, to be sent either by post or electronically by a scanned copy through official institutional email when available.

In those instances where in spite of these precautions a case of plagiarism goes undetected in the review process and is discovered after publication, both online and print versions of the journals concerned will carry a notice of the discovery. Depending on the seriousness of the case, the Academy reserves the right to inform the heads of the offending authors’ institutions and their funding agencies about the editors’ findings.

The jurisdiction for all disputes concerning submitted articles and published material will be at courts/tribunals situated in Bangalore City only.

Dated April 2012