Plagiarism Policy

At MAC Law Review, academic integrity is foundational. Plagiarism—whether intentional or inadvertent—is unacceptable. The following principles and procedures apply:

Definition and Scope

  • Plagiarism is defined as presenting another person’s ideas, text, data, or expression without proper attribution.
  • Self-plagiarism (duplicate publication) occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of their own published work without full acknowledgement.
  • The Journal also treats redundant publication, unauthorised translation, and overlapping submissions as violations of ethical publishing standards.

Screening and Detection

  • As part of the submission process, the corresponding author must upload a plagiarism similarity report generated by a reliable plagiarism detection software (e.g., Turnitin or iThenticate). Submissions without an accompanying report will not proceed to peer review.
  • All submissions are screened via plagiarism-detection software (e.g., iThenticate) to assess similarity indices and potential overlap.
  • The Editorial Office reserves the right to evaluate similarity reports manually to distinguish between acceptable overlap (e.g. quoted text, common phrases) and unethical copying.

Thresholds and Actions

  • Minor overlap (e.g. < 15 % similarity, with proper citations) may prompt a revision request to the author before peer review.
  • Moderate overlap (e.g. 15 %–30 %) or failure to properly cite key passages may lead to outright rejection or a request for major rewriting.
  • High overlap (over 30 %) or clear evidence of copying without attribution results in rejection without recourse and possible blacklisting of the author(s).
  • If plagiarism is discovered post-publication, the Journal will follow the COPE flowchart procedures: issue a public retraction, notify the authors’ institutions, and watermark the online article as retracted.

Author Responsibilities

  • Authors must ensure that all sources are properly acknowledged and quoted or paraphrased with citation.
  • If using any previously published material (even their own work), authors must disclose it and provide proper citations.
  • Authors should declare in a covering letter that the submission is original, unpublished elsewhere, and is not under concurrent consideration by another journal.

The Journal takes all violations seriously. If a manuscript or published article is found to breach this policy, appropriate corrective or punitive measures will be enforced to uphold scholarly integrity.

The MAC Law Review employs a tolerance level of up to 15% for similarities, considering legitimate cases of common phrases and proper citations