Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism Policy

Conditions for submission: plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate submission, and preprint disclosure.

Communica: Journal of Communication upholds high standards of academic integrity and only considers original and unpublished scholarly work. All submitted manuscripts are screened using Turnitin to assess textual similarity. However, the similarity score is only a screening tool; the final determination of plagiarism, improper quotation, duplicate publication, or self-plagiarism remains a matter of editorial judgment.

Plagiarism includes the use of another person's words, ideas, theories, communication concepts, media analyses, interview material, datasets, tables, images, audiovisual content, campaign materials, screenshots, or findings without proper acknowledgment. Self-plagiarism or text recycling refers to the substantial reuse of one's own previously published material without proper citation, disclosure, or scholarly justification. Both are considered serious violations of publication ethics.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that all quotations, paraphrases, borrowed ideas, theoretical concepts, media texts, interview excerpts, datasets, visual materials, and reproduced content are clearly cited and properly referenced. Where necessary, authors must also obtain permission for reused copyrighted photographs, advertisements, screenshots, videos, graphics, or other media materials.

A low similarity score does not automatically mean the manuscript is free from plagiarism, and a high similarity score does not automatically prove misconduct. Editors assess the source, context, nature, location, extent, attribution, and scholarly significance of the matching material before making a decision.

Duplicate or redundant publication occurs when an author submits or publishes substantially the same work in more than one venue without proper disclosure, cross-referencing, or scholarly justification. This includes substantial overlap in title, objectives, theoretical framework, communication data, media samples, interview material, methods, analysis, discussion, implications, or conclusions.

Manuscripts that are under review in another journal, already formally published, or submitted simultaneously to more than one outlet will not be considered. If any part of the manuscript has appeared previously in another form, including conference proceedings, working papers, institutional reports, theses, dissertations, book chapters, media-research reports, or another language version, authors must disclose this clearly at the time of submission.

The journal may consider manuscripts previously posted as preprints, provided that the preprint has not undergone formal journal publication and that the preprint status is fully disclosed during submission.

Authors must provide the preprint server name and URL or DOI, and must ensure that the preprint version does not conflict with copyright, participant confidentiality, media licensing, organizational agreements, ethical obligations, or third-party restrictions. Once the article is published in the journal, authors are encouraged to update the preprint record with a link to the final published version.

Editorial Follow-Up and Author Responsibilities

• All manuscripts may be checked through Turnitin before peer review and, where necessary, after revision.
• The Editorial Board may provide or request a similarity report during the editorial process.
• Authors must revise problematic sections carefully, especially where quotation, paraphrasing, citation, theoretical attribution, source acknowledgment, or reuse of media content is insufficient.
• Authors should not attempt to reduce similarity mechanically by replacing isolated words while retaining substantially copied sentence structures, arguments, interpretations, or conceptual framing.
• Direct quotations from interviews, media texts, speeches, social-media content, advertisements, or other communication materials must be clearly distinguished from the author's own narrative and properly attributed where ethically and legally appropriate.
• Images, screenshots, advertisements, photographs, audiovisual materials, and other third-party media must not be reproduced without appropriate attribution and, where required, permission.
• Failure to address similarity concerns adequately may result in rejection or discontinuation of the review process.
• If plagiarism is identified after publication, the journal will take appropriate action according to its ethics, correction, and retraction policies.