By submitting a manuscript to the Journal of Research (IMTEZAAJ), it is understood that it is an original manuscript, unpublished work, and is not submitted elsewhere. Plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the author’s work, in whole or in part without proper citation would not be tolerated by the editorial board. Plagiarism appears in various forms such as copying the same content from the other source; most commonly from the internet, copying elements of another author’s paper such as figures, tables, or illustrations that could not be considered as common knowledge.

Self-plagiarism is also not allowed. "IMTEZAAJ" defines self-plagiarism as the intentional or unintentional reuse of one’s copyrighted work without citing the source. However, this policy does not apply to the manuscripts presented/appeared in any conference proceeding from the author's side and an explicit reference is made.

Plagiarism Check:

Firstly, "IMTEZAAJ" checks plagiarism with the software recommended by HEC Pakistan. Secondly, it is checked manually by the team of (IMTEZAAJ). If plagiarism is detected by the editorial/advisory board member, reviewer, etc., at any stage of article processing- before or after acceptance, during editing, or at a proofreading stage, we will inform the same to the author(s) and will ask them to reconsider the content or to cite the references from where the content has been taken. HEC Pakistan has already set the acceptable limit of similarity index produced by the TURNITIN i.e. 19%.

If the similarity with different sources is more than 19% but less than 25%, we prefer to send back the manuscript to the author and ask him/her to resubmit the paper after fixing that problem. But, if more than 25% of the paper is plagiarized the article may be rejected and the same is notified to the author.

Plagiarism detected after publishing:

Sometimes, TURNITIN does not work properly regarding the detection of plagiarism from the papers written in Urdu. In that case, if the plagiarism is detected manually and reported with proof after publishing"(Imtezaaj" will investigate the researcher. In case, plagiarism is found, the paper may be formally retracted. An editor will write to the author’s institute and funding agencies about that and the paper containing the plagiarism will be marked "Plagiarism Detected after Publishing" on each page of the PDF Copy for two months. Moreover, after two months, that paper will be removed from the website, and author(s) will be banned for six (6) upcoming issues of "Imtezaaj".

Plagiarism Undertaking:

Authors must declare that their work is original at the time of submission. For that, an undertaking form has been given in the link below, stating that the author has not plagiarized any material and if found guilty he/she shall be solely responsible and  (Imtezaaj) reserves the right to take action against him. Author(s) are required to submit that form duly signed and stamped at the time of manuscript submission. In case, if a paper has multiple authors, the first/ principal author would be bound to take responsibility for the plagiarism, and only he would be required to submit the said undertaking.