Plagiarism policy

The International Relations, Public Communications and Regional Studies take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Plagiarism means presenting partial or wholesale someone else’s scientific and/or creative results or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement of the authorship. Auto-plagiarism is the presentation of one’s own previously published research findings within a manuscript as if they were newly-obtained results. The authors of an article must guarantee that they have written a completely original work, and if the authors use the work and/or the words of other authors, this should be indicated appropriately by a reference or indicated within the text.

The International Relations, Public Communications and Regional Studie seeks to protect the rights of its authors and always investigates claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, it seeks to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software (by the developer of the “Antiplagyat” service of the Unicheck company).

Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action. If the plagiarism within an article amounts to more than 25%, the article will be rejected, and the author’s institution or employer will be informed of the fact.

The submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time constitutes unethical publication behaviour and is inadmissible.

If plagiarism is revealed after the publication of the manuscript, the Editorial Board will conduct an investigation into it. Depending on the scale of the plagiarism, the article may also be withdrawn or removed.