Plagiarism and AI Usage Policy

Plagiarism and AI Usage Policy

Business and Economic Publication is committed to maintaining the highest standards of academic integrity, originality, and publication ethics. All manuscripts submitted to the journal must represent original scholarly work.

1. Plagiarism Policy & Similarity Threshold

To preserve academic honesty, all submitted manuscripts undergo rigorous screening for plagiarism and text similarity before being sent for peer review.

  • Screening Tool: Screening is conducted using automated anti-plagiarism software (Turnitin or iThenticate).

  • Maximum Similarity Limit: The overall similarity index must not exceed 20%.

  • Single-Source Limit: Text similarity from a single source must not exceed 3% (excluding standard bibliography/references, formal titles, and common methodology formulas).

  • Forms of Plagiarism Monitored:

    • Direct Plagiarism: Unattributed copying of text verbatim from other sources.

    • Self-Plagiarism / Duplicate Submission: Reusing substantial portions of the author's previously published work without appropriate citation.

    • Paraphrasing Plagiarism: Restructuring another author's ideas or findings without proper attribution.

Editorial Actions on Plagiarism Violations:

  • Similarity 21% – 30%: The manuscript will be returned to the authors for mandatory revision and paraphrasing prior to peer review.

  • Similarity > 30% or Severe Unattributed Copying: The manuscript will be rejected immediately without peer review.

  • Post-Publication Discovery: If plagiarism is detected after publication, the editorial team will conduct an investigation in accordance with COPE guidelines, which may result in a formal Retraction Notice.

2. Policy on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-Assisted Technologies

Business and Economic Publication recognizes the rapid evolution of Generative Artificial Intelligence (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot) in academic workflows. To ensure ethical transparency and accountability, the journal enforces the following policy:

A. Authorship Eligibility

  • AI tools, models, or software cannot be listed as an author or co-author.

  • Authorship conveys legal accountability for the manuscript's content, which AI tools cannot possess or accept.

B. Permissible Use of AI AI and AI-assisted tools may be used solely to improve readability, language clarity, grammar, or formatting of the author's original ideas.

C. Impermissible Use of AI

  • Generating primary research text, literature reviews, or core critical analysis.

  • Creating synthetic data, fabricated statistics, or manipulated charts/figures.

  • Inventing or generating unverified bibliographic references.

D. Mandatory Disclosure & Transparency If Generative AI tools were used during the drafting, editing, or preparation of the manuscript, authors must explicitly disclose this in a dedicated section (e.g., in the Acknowledgement section or a Declaration Statement). The disclosure must specify:

  1. The name and version of the AI tool used (e.g., ChatGPT v4, OpenAI).

  2. The exact purpose for which the tool was utilized (e.g., grammar refinement and language editing).

E. Author Accountability Authors remain 100% accountable and responsible for all content in their submitted work, including the accuracy of facts, literature citations, data interpretation, and avoiding plagiarized phrases generated by AI tools.