Plagiarism is commonly defined as "the representation of the words or ideas of another as one's own in any academic work" (Rutgers University, Academic Integrity Policy, Section 2C). In scientific writing and publishing, plagiarism most often occurs when ideas or key phrases are taken from a literature source, and the source is not cited. Copying a sentence from another work and merely replacing a few words in that sentence also is considered plagiarism.
Plagiarism is prohibited because it is dishonest. Authors who do not credit the original sources of ideas and phrases are guilty of stealing the original authors' scientific contributions. Scientific discoveries and progress build on the previous accomplishments of other scientists. They deserve—and receive—proper recognition when their contributions used in current works are acknowledged with appropriate citations.
All Journals published by the Asian Network for Scientific Information use the program iThenticate® to check submitted manuscripts for plagiarism. Editors evaluate the results of the analysis to determine whether a violation of the Publications Ethics Policy has occurred. If authors reuse text from previously published, copyrighted materials, they must cite the original publication to avoid copyright infringement. In the Materials and Methods section of a manuscript, it may be difficult to avoid using the wording that is the same as the wording used by other writers. In such cases, authors may simply be asked to revise the duplicated passages.