Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism and Data Fabrication

Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. We define plagiarism as copying text, ideas, figure, or data from another source, even from our own publications, without giving credit to the original sources. To ensure originality, all submitted manuscripts are screened using plagiarism checker Turnitin. Manuscripts indicated with a similarity index of more than 20% may be rejected. Data presented must be original and not inappropriately selected, manipulated, enhanced, or fabricated. This includes 1) exclusion of data points to enhance significance of conclusions, 2) fabrication of data, 3) selection of results that support a particular conclusion at the expense of contradictory data, 4) deliberate selection of analysis tools or methods to support a particular conclusion (including p-hacking). We strongly recommend preregistration of methods and analysis.