Plagiarism is defined as copying another person’s text or ideas without proper attribution or citation, regardless of the source, authorship, or permission. The Malaysian Journal of Action Research recognises the serious nature of this offence. Therefore, it has established a clear policy outlining specific actions (penalties) when plagiarism is detected in any submitted manuscript.

The plagiarism policy of the Malaysian Journal of Action Research is as follows:

1. All submitted manuscripts must be original, unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Authors are required to declare these conditions unequivocally at the outset of the submission process, thereby affirming the originality and exclusivity of their manuscript.

2. The journal employs the advanced plagiarism detection software, Turnitin, to identify any potential instances of plagiarism within submitted manuscripts. This also includes an Artificial Intelligence (AI) detector to identify if a tool such as ChatGPT has been used to generate any of the text. It is crucial for authors to ensure that the Turnitin similarity report for their submission is 25% or below, as we consider this to be an acceptable threshold for any overlap with existing publications.

3. In cases of minor plagiarism, where a sentence or short paragraph from another manuscript has been copied without significant data or ideas, authors will receive a warning and be requested to revise the manuscript to properly cite the original sources.

4. When a significant piece of data, paragraph, or sentence from another manuscript has been plagiarised without proper citation, the submitted manuscript will be automatically rejected.

5. Instances of severe plagiarism, involving the reproduction of large portions of another manuscript, including original results, ideas, and methods, will result in automatic rejection of the manuscript. Additionally, authors engaging in severe plagiarism will be prohibited from submitting further manuscripts to the journal.

6. All authors are collectively responsible for the content of their submitted manuscript, and they all sign the journal Copyright Transfer Form. Therefore, if a penalty is imposed on a manuscript due to plagiarism, all authors will be subject to the same penalty without exception.

7. In the case of self-plagiarism, the term intermediate plagiarism is applied if less than one-half of the manuscript but more than one-tenth of the manuscript is reused from a previously published work. Minor self-plagiarism is classified if the experimental or methods section is majorly similar or quite similar to a previously published work.

8. Authors are allowed to use previously published material to clarify the presentation of new results. However, the previously published material must be identified, and the differences from the current publication must be mentioned. Permission to republish must be obtained from the copyright holder.

9. The Manuscript and Web Editor for the journal is responsible for maintaining a list of authors subjected to penalties. If a banned author is identified, appropriate measures will be taken by the Editor-in-Chief or a member of the Editorial Board.

This plagiarism policy will be prominently displayed on the homepage of the Malaysian Journal of Action Research, and authors will be provided with a copy upon initial receipt of their original manuscript. Authors will be required to acknowledge and confirm their understanding of this policy when submitting their manuscripts. The aim is to maintain the highest standards of academic integrity and ensure that the publication process is free from plagiarism.