A Plagiarism Policy has been designed to create awareness and define various forms in which Plagiarism exhibits itself and address the issue of copied work.

Aim:

The aim of this policy is to apprise students, teachers, researchers and staff about Plagiarism and how it can be avoided. It is also aimed at discouraging Plagiarism.

Applicability:

The policy is applicable to students, teachers, researchers and staff of Dental College HITEC-Institute Medical Sciences who are involved in writing or publishing their work.

Plagiarism is defined as:

 “Taking and using the thoughts, writings, and inventions of another person as one’s own”.

Plagiarism can be in the form of:

1. Copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author’s paper or unpublished report without citing the exact reference. Copying elements of another author’s paper, such as equations or illustrations that are not common knowledge, or copying or purposely paraphrasing sentences without citing the source.
2. Copying portions of another author’s paper or from reports by citing but not clearly differentiating what text has been copied (e.g. not applying quotation marks correctly) and /or not citing the source correctly”.
3. “The unacknowledged use of computer programs, mathematical / computer models / algorithms, computer software in all forms, macros, spreadsheets, web pages, databases, mathematical deviations and calculations, designs / models / displays of any sort, diagrams, graphs, tables, drawings, works of art of any sort, fine art pieces or artifacts, digital images, computer-aided design drawings, GIS files, photographs, maps, music / composition of any sort, posters, presentations and tracing.”
4. “Self-plagiarism, that is, the verbatim or near-verbatim re-use of significant portions of one’s own copyrighted work without citing the original source.”

Responsibility of the Institutions & Organizations:

It is the responsibility of the institution to apprise their students, teachers, researchers and staff of the definition, implications and resulting punishments in case, after due investigation, they are found guilty of plagiarism.

The students, teachers, researchers and staff should be acquainted with this policy and ensure that they are fully aware that all authors are deemed to be individually and collectively responsible for the contents of papers published by Journals / Publishers etc.

Hence, it is the responsibility of each author, including the coauthors, to ensure that papers submitted for publication should attain the highest ethical standards with respect to plagiarism.

Guidelines for the authors:

Students/Scholars work will be checked through anti-plagiarism service (Turnitin from Higher Education Commission Pakistan), therefore, they must follow proper documenting style in writing report or paper.

If the report has similarity index of 20% then it needs to be revised. If any single source has similarity index >=5% without citation then it will be sent back for revision.