Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism is the "stealing or misusing scholarly property and the significant copying of someone else’s work." Plagiarism is when large portions of the text have been copied and pasted without proper and unequivocal acknowledgment/attribution. 

JSHMDC follows COPE guidelines. Any SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT will be dealt with as per COPE guidelines.

All the submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism through TURNITIN'S SOFTWARE, following the criteria/guidelines defined by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan, ICMJE, and COPE.

The similarity index should be less than 19%. If the similarity index is more than 50% it is rejected. If the similarity index is 19% or more than 19%, but less than 50% the manuscript is not processed further until revised by the author. If a plagiarized manuscript is submitted multiple times, it is rejected from further processing.

Publication misconduct is dealt by asking the corresponding author for an explanation within two weeks.  If an acceptable explanation is provided by the author(s), the editorial board recommends appropriate changes, after which the review process for the submitted manuscript may commence. In no response in two weeks or if there is an unsatisfactory explanation, the editorial board will decide regarding the fate of the article and authors, including:
o REJECTION of the manuscript
o RETRACTION of already published article 
A RETRACTION notice will also be on the journal’s website. The authors will be blacklisted from further publication in the JSHMDC for two years or permanently, depending upon the nature of the misconduct. The institutional head, HEC, PMC, and other editorial associations may also be informed of this misconduct.