Plagiarism Policy

The Journal of Food, Nutrition, and Health Advances (JFNH Advances) is steadfastly committed to maintaining the highest level of integrity in the scientific content it publishes. We maintain a strict zero-tolerance policy against plagiarism, data fabrication, and academic misconduct. All authors submitting their manuscripts to this journal must ensure that their work is entirely original and that any external sources are appropriately cited and acknowledged.

1. Definition of Plagiarism

JFNH Advances adopts the broad definition of plagiarism, which includes, but is not limited to:

  • Direct Plagiarism: Copying text, data, or figures from other sources without proper quotation marks and attribution.

  • Mosaic/Patchwork Plagiarism: Borrowing ideas, sentence structures, or paragraphs from multiple sources and combining them without appropriate citations.

  • Self-Plagiarism (Text Recycling): Reusing substantial parts of the author's own previously published work without disclosure and proper citation.

  • Idea Plagiarism: Presenting someone else's original idea, theory, or scientific process as one’s own.

2. Similarity Screening Process

To ensure the originality of submitted manuscripts, the Editorial Board rigorously screens all submissions using Turnitin, a leading similarity detection software, prior to the peer-review process.

  • Maximum Acceptable Threshold: The overall similarity index must not exceed 20%.

  • Single-Source Limitation: Even if the overall similarity is below 20%, the similarity from any single source must not exceed 5%.

  • Exclusions: During the Turnitin screening, the following sections are generally excluded from the similarity percentage calculation:

    • Direct quotations (properly enclosed in quotation marks).

    • Bibliography/References section.

    • Small matches (e.g., standard methodological phrases or strings of less than 10 words).

3. Editorial Actions and Sanctions

If plagiarism or unacceptable similarity is detected, the Editorial Board will follow the operational flowcharts provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to handle the case. The actions taken depend on the stage at which the plagiarism is detected:

A. Pre-Publication (During Desk Review or Peer Review)

  • Minor Similarity (10% - 20% with poor paraphrasing): The manuscript will be returned to the corresponding author with a request to rewrite, paraphrase, and properly cite the flagged sections before it can proceed to peer review.

  • Major Plagiarism (>20% or clear evidence of direct copying): The manuscript will be summarily rejected without the opportunity for resubmission. The authors' affiliated institutions may be notified in severe cases of deliberate misconduct.

B. Post-Publication: If plagiarism is discovered after a manuscript has been officially published, the Editorial Board will conduct a thorough investigation. If the allegations are proven to be true, the journal will immediately execute a formal Retraction of the article. The retracted article will be marked with a "RETRACTED" watermark, a retraction notice will be published, and indexing databases (e.g., Crossref, Scopus, Google Scholar) will be updated accordingly.

4. Author's Responsibility

By submitting a manuscript to JFNH Advances, the authors explicitly warrant that the manuscript is their original work, has not been published previously, and is not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Authors bear full legal and ethical responsibility for the content and originality of their published articles.