Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism Policy

Conditions for submission: plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate submission, and preprint disclosure.

Ilomata International Journal of Social Science upholds the highest standards of academic integrity and only considers original and unpublished scholarly work. All submitted manuscripts are screened using Turnitin to assess textual similarity. However, the similarity score is only a screening tool; the final determination of plagiarism, improper quotation, duplicate publication, or self-plagiarism remains a matter of editorial judgment.

Plagiarism includes the use of another person's words, ideas, theories, interpretations, data, tables, figures, survey instruments, interview materials, conceptual frameworks, policy analyses, or findings without proper acknowledgment. Self-plagiarism or text recycling refers to the substantial reuse of one's own previously published material without proper citation, disclosure, or justification. Both are considered serious violations of publication ethics.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that all quotations, paraphrases, borrowed concepts, theoretical perspectives, datasets, survey materials, interview excerpts, policy documents, tables, figures, and reproduced material are clearly cited and properly referenced. Where necessary, authors must also obtain permission for reused copyrighted or proprietary material.

A low similarity score does not automatically mean the manuscript is free from plagiarism, and a high similarity score does not automatically prove misconduct. Editors assess the nature, location, source, and significance of the matching material before making a decision, including whether overlap results from properly cited legal texts, policy documents, standardized terminology, or methodological descriptions.

Duplicate or redundant publication occurs when an author submits or publishes substantially the same work in more than one venue without proper disclosure, cross-referencing, or justification. This includes substantial overlap in title, research questions, theoretical framework, population or sample, social context, datasets, methodology, analysis, discussion, or conclusions.

Manuscripts that are under review in another journal, already formally published, or submitted simultaneously to more than one outlet will not be considered. If any part of the manuscript has appeared previously in another form, including conference proceedings, institutional repositories, working papers, policy reports, research reports, theses or dissertations, book chapters, community studies, or another language version, authors must disclose this clearly at the time of submission.

The journal may consider manuscripts previously posted as preprints, provided that the preprint has not undergone formal journal publication and that the preprint status is fully disclosed during submission.

Authors must provide the preprint server name and URL or DOI, and must ensure that the preprint version does not conflict with copyright, ethical obligations, participant confidentiality, institutional requirements, community protections, contractual restrictions, or third-party rights. Once the article is published in the journal, authors are encouraged to update the preprint record with a link to the final published version.

Editorial Follow-Up and Author Responsibilities

• All manuscripts may be checked through Turnitin before peer review and, where necessary, after revision.
• The Editorial Board may provide or request a similarity report during the editorial process.
• Authors must revise problematic sections carefully, especially where quotation, paraphrasing, citation, source acknowledgment, or reuse of previously published material is insufficient.
• Authors must clearly cite sources for borrowed social theories, conceptual frameworks, policy models, survey instruments, interview guides, scales, datasets, tables, figures, official statistics, and institutional documents where applicable.
• Direct quotations from interview participants, focus groups, public documents, laws, reports, or media sources must be clearly identified and appropriately attributed.
• Previously published analyses, datasets, or conceptual material by the same authors must be cited and clearly distinguished from the manuscript's new scholarly contribution.
• Failure to address similarity concerns adequately may result in rejection or discontinuation of the review process.
• If plagiarism is identified after publication, the journal will take appropriate action according to its ethics, correction, and retraction policies.