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.

The Sakarya Medical Journal is an international refereed scientific journal that publishes reviews and research articles on health sciences. Submitted articles are evaluated in a double-blinded peer-reviewed fashion. Sakarya Medical Journal and its board members take plagiarism very seriously and act meticulously on this issue.

The following types of plagiarism are considered by Sakarya Medical Journal:

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.

The journal respects intellectual property rights and aims to protect and promote the original work of its authors. Having plagiarized content in articles does violate the 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 Publication Board of the journal first examines the work. Then 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.

• 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 complaint by sending an e-mail to sakaryatipdergisi@sakarya.edu.tr .

The author should submit the similarity report for new studies submitted to the journal. Pre-checked articles can be subjected to plagiarism scanning again by using the iThenticate program.

If plagiarism/self-plagiarism is detected, the authors are informed. An article with a high overall similarity rate (maximum 30% excluding the references) may be rejected or sent back to the author to reduce the similarity rate.