Plagiarism is the unethical act of copying someone else’s prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicit acknowledgment of the original author and source.

Types of Plagiarism

The following types of plagiarism are considered by UMP:

Full Plagiarism: Previously published content without any changes to the text, idea, and grammar is considered full plagiarism. It involves presenting exact text from a source as one’s own.

Partial Plagiarism: If the content is a mixture of multiple different sources, where the author has extensively rephrased text, then it is known as partial plagiarism.

Self-Plagiarism: When an author reuses complete or portions of their pre-published research, then it is known as self-plagiarism. Complete self-plagiarism is a case when an author republishes their own previously published work in a new journal.

Plagiarism Action Plan and Measures of the Journal

The journal respects intellectual property rights and aims to protect and promote the original work of its authors. Plagiarized content in articles violates research and originality standards. Therefore, all the authors submitting articles to the journal are expected to comply with ethical standards and avoid all forms of plagiarism. If a submitted or published article is suspected of containing plagiarism, the work is reviewed by the Editorial Board. Afterward, the journal contacts the author(s) and asks them to submit their justifications within 15 days. If the journal does not receive any response from the author(s) within the specified time, it will contact the affiliated university and request the investigation of the claim.

Articles submitted to Universal Materials and Physics are subjected to similarity checks using internationally recognized plagiarism detection programs such as ithenticate, etc. The rules adopted in determining the similarity rate are as follows:

• The general similarity rate of the article must be 25% or less. At this stage, articles with a general similarity rate of more than 25% are returned to the author without entering the arbitration process.
• The similarity rate to a particular source must be less than 5% in the general similarity rate of the article.
• Bibliographic materials (bibliography, citations, etc.) are not included in the scan.
• Editors can check the similarity during-after the arbitration process at each time of the publication process.
• The above-mentioned rules are assumed to be accepted by all authors applying for articles.

The journal will take the following serious measures for published articles that are found to contain plagiarism:

• The journal will immediately contact the university to which the author(s) are affiliated in order to take final action against the related author.
• The journal will remove the PDF copy of the published article from the website, will remove the published article from the issue file, and will disable all links to the published article. The phrase "Plagiarized Article" will be added to the title of the published article.
• The journal will disable the author's account and reject all future submissions by the author for the following 2 years.

Note: If readers notice an error or inaccuracy in a published article, they can file a notification by sending an e-mail to hum@sakarya.edu.tr.