Academy Policy on Plagiarism

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 have become slack in the sense of not conveying 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 receipt of a manuscript by any of the Academy journals, the authors or corresponding author will be required to sign an undertaking to the effect that the work has not been submitted elsewhere for publication, the claimed new results express the author’s own findings, and all material taken from the existing literature has been properly acknowledged and referenced.

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.