At the Journal of Contemporary Administration (Revista de Administração Contemporânea, RAC), we receive more than 400 manuscripts per year for publication in our journal. Unfortunately, a small percentage fails to meet our ethics guidelines and even some of those cases are suspected of plagiarism. RAC regards plagiarism as a very serious offense. It is an illegal form of copying. RAC is a member of, and subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE, following its advice. Plagiarism is defined as the unacknowledged use of the work of others as if this were your own original work.

 

Examples of plagiarism: 

- Copying and pasting from the Internet and posting somewhere else without proper citation.

- Putting your name on another person’s essay or project.

- Copying exact wording from another person’s text.

- Using another person’s photo, diagram, tables, sounds, or ideas without proper citation.

- Presenting research in your own words without providing references

- Purchasing another person’s text and using it as your own.

- Present ideas in the same format and order as your research source.

 

By submitting a paper for publication to this journal, the author(s) certify that: 

- I/We are fully aware that plagiarism is wrong.

- I/We know that plagiarism is the use of another person’s idea or published work and pretending that it is one’s own.

- I/ We declare that each contribution to my project from the work(s) of other peoples' published works or unpublished sources have been acknowledged and source of information have been referenced.

- I/We certify that I/we are solely responsible for any incomplete reference that may remain in my/our work.

 

Anti-plagiarism declaration:

I have read and understood the RAC policy on plagiarism. I hereby declare that this piece of the manuscript is the result of my own independent scholarly work and that in all cases material from the work of others (in books, articles, essays, dissertations, and on the internet) is acknowledged, and quotations and paraphrases are clearly indicated. No material other than that listed has been used. This written work has not previously or not yet been published.

 

Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism:

- Learn the citation expectations for each course.

- When you take notes for a paper, be sure to cite sources so you don’t get mixed up later.

- When you research online, be sure to find the original source of the information, since it is possible that websites plagiarize.

- If you are really worried, ask your professor if you can submit a rough draft so they can check your citations.

- When in doubt, authors must cite. It is better to have too many citations than few.

To help address and prevent plagiarism, RAC incorporates iThenticate into its editorial workflows. The main features of iThenticate are i) prevent plagiarism by detecting textual similarities which could indicate misconduct; and ii) compare full-text manuscripts against a database with millions of articles, thousands of journals, books from hundreds of publishers, and billion web pages. The main function of iThenticate is to identify the textual overlap of a manuscript against a database of published works and internet sources.

 

Policies for Data Falsification and Fabrication

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity defines research falsification as “manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.” Data fabrication, on the other hand, refers to "making up" of entire sets of data or results and recording or reporting them as genuine findings. It is worth noting that inaccuracies in data and reported findings are more commonly the result of honest mistakes on the part of the authors – mistakes do happen! With this in mind, it is important to investigate any allegations made against authors to ascertain whether or not this is the result of research misconduct, or whether this is simply a genuine oversight.

You can certainly ask your coworker for clarification without accusing him of altering the original data. If you are worried that he/she will feel accused in any case, this would also be a question for your mutual advisor, since he/she might be in the best position to judge whether the explanation is appropriate <https://www.aps.org/programs/education/ethics/publication/fabrication-discussion.cfm>.

The concern with falsification and fabrication has been a worldwide trend, as highlighted by Resnik (2014). Mistakes can certainly occur in drafting a paper, and it’s unwise to make accusations before knowing the full story. If you have questions, as a coauthor of the paper, it is reasonable for you to be satisfied that the revised paper is complete and accurate.

For these reasons, the Journal of Contemporary Administration (Revista de Administração Contemporânea, RAC) assumes that research misconduct means fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results.

- Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them.

- Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.

- Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.

- Research misconduct does not include honest errors or differences of opinion.

And, to address potentially related problems, RAC adopts as a policy:

• Open data and materials: Since issue 22(4) of 2018, RAC, in line with Open Science practices, has strongly encouraged the publication of data and open materials, as a way of collaborating to maintain the ethical standards adopted in the research whose results will be published in this journal.

• Authors who choose not to share data as add-ins to their work are required by RAC to add a clarifying note of why they took this action (not sharing data via repository).

In case of RAC receives any claim of data fabrication or falsification of work under evaluation, the peer review process is put on hold whilst the issue is investigated. If the allegation appears to be founded, the author should be contacted and the original raw data may be requested. If further investigation is required, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) recommends that any investigations should be undertaken by the author’s institution.