Step 5: The Final Check - Plagiarism, Citation and Copyrights

• Inadvertent Plagiarism: or any material you leveraged in your manuscript that wasn’t your own, you should provide proper attribution to the original sources. Make sure you have properly cited all your sources. Utilizing a plagiarism checker tool like iThenticate will identify any matched content, un-cited phrases and original sources for you. Many of the world’s leading publishers currently use iThenticate to screen submitted work before publication. Pre-checking your research will give you peace of mind that your research meets the requirements of the publisher.
• Self-plagiarism: Sometimes writers do not know that they are committing plagiarism. Did you know that authors are required to cite their own previously published material if they are referencing it within a new paper due to copyright infringement policies? Self-plagiarism is becoming a widely discussed and debated area – and a situation no author or researcher wants to be in.
• Copyright Infringement: If you are using copyrighted figures or graphics, many journals may require you to obtain written permission from the copyright holder or publisher to utilize the work, and submit the authorization with the manuscript. It is a fundamental principle to abide by these guidelines in order for publishers to fully determine whether your submission is acceptable for publication.

If you have taken each of the above steps into account prior to submitting your manuscript or thesis, your research should receive the consideration it deserves. The primary goal of these guidelines is for your research to stand out based on its merits rather than be brushed aside because a small submission detail was accidentally left out.

Again, keep in mind that the above checklist is a foundational guide only. To ensure that your submission and any accompanying documents are properly formatted, be sure to refer to each journal’s specific submission guidelines.

« Step 4: Including Essential Details

Resources:

Clarke, Maxine. “How do I submit a paper to a scientific journal?” SciDev.Net, 2011. http://www.scidev.net/en/practical-guides/how-do-i-submit-a-paper-to-a-scientific-journal-.html

Springer Science & Business Media, 2011. http://www.springer.com/help?SGWID=0-114-6-462209-0

“Proposal Guidelines for Scientific, Technical, Medical, and Scholarly.” John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 2011. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-301841.html

“Guidelines for Book Authors & Editors.” Elsevier B.V. http://authors.elsevier.com/pdfs/jai_guide.pdf

“Manuscript Formatting Guide.” Nature Publishing Group . 2011. http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/#a3

“Citation.” Wikimedia Foundation Inc, November, 26th, 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation#Citation_systems