Plagiarism statement

Journal of Exercise Science & Physical Activity Reviews (JESPAR) urges all authors submitting manuscripts to follow principles of scientific transparency, honesty, thoroughness and excellence in research, transparency, respect for co-authors or research participants, etc.

Journal of Exercise Science & Physical Activity Reviews (JESPAR) follows ethical and integrity standards of science and adheres to the COPE principles. It prevents any academic integrity violations.

Cases of academic integrity violations in research:

• Authorship manipulations or neglect of author’s roles in articles. According to the Journal of Exercise Science & Physical Activity Reviews (JESPAR) policies, all authors must be indicated in the cover letter submitted with a manuscript. A person is regarded as an author if he or she is responsible for a specific aspect of the research, preparation of the work for publication, or has contributed to the uniqueness of the idea, project, or research. He acknowledges his contribution to the final version of the work. A small contribution may not be credited, but authors and co-authors have the right to acknowledge any person for a contribution to the research by mentioning them in the Acknowledgments section, even if their contribution is small or their mention is appropriate. According to our policy, authors and co-authors of submitted articles must complete a cover letter form indicating all co-authors and their consent to publish the article.
• Repeated article submission. The same manuscript is sent to several journals simultaneously or with a break of several years.
• Excessive publication. It means the practice of submitting separate parts of the same research to several journals or presence of already published works without citing, authorizing or justifying them. Self-plagiarism is considered as excessive publication, which involves reusing or appropriating ideas from previously published works without proper authorship indication. Often these actions can be unintentional. The author must indicate the fact of application of previously published research materials. It allows to assess the degree of use of such information by the author.
• Citation manipulations. The following cases are citation manipulations:
• overciting of own works to raise personal indexation in research bases;
• overciting of works in the same journal to raise its indexation in research bases;
• overciting for honorary reasons to raise indexation of journal editors-in-chief or famous scientists.
• Data fabrication. Use of fake data, intentional change of research results, disorder of data collecting and processing, citing of fake works or reference manipulations.
• Falsification. Data manipulations, violations of equipment settings to benefit from the research results, changes of processed data, etc.

Before sending the manuscript to review, all papers are checked for originality. According to the Aims and Scope, authors must represent only their own ideas and research results. Upon submission of their papers, authors agree that managing editors will screen the articles for originality.

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

Academic plagiarism deals with all types of sources: texts, figures, fragments, mathematic formulas, program codes, etc. The same concerns published and non-published books, articles, conference proceedings, manuscripts, etc.

To check the originality of submitted manuscripts, we use Turnitin Similarity and OXSICO checking tools. One of the leading similarity detection services, Turnitin Similarity provides a document check against the world’s largest content database of academic and online sources to detect potential plagiarism. Institutions and researchers all around the world use this tool to ensure academic integrity and promote originality in research work.

Plagiarism can take different forms – from copying word by word to rewriting.

There are the following forms of academic plagiarism:

• Word-for-word text use without any citations. In some cases, even a separate word should be cited (if it has a unique meaning).
• Application of facts, ideas, formulas, etc. without any citations.
• Text paraphrasing without any citations.
• Recognition of ordered works as own (theses, monographs, textbooks, articles, conference proceedings, qualification works, reports, etc.).
• Copy (Ctrl+C). The work contains significant chunks of text from one source without modification and relevant references.
• Self-plagiarism (recycling). Material is borrowed literally from own previous works without proper references.
• Mosaic (patchwriting). This type of plagiarism occurs when an author borrows phrases from a source without quotation marks or the author uses synonyms while maintaining the same general structure and meaning of the original.
• Casual plagiarism occurs when an author neglects to cite his or her own sources, misquotes them or inadvertently paraphrases a source via similar words, word groups, and/or sentence structure without citing the source.
• Remix. Paragraphs are taken from several sources without references.
• Hybrid. The work combines proper references with copied parts of the text without reference.
• Mashup. The work mixes copied material from many sources.
• Links to non-existent sources (404 Error). The work includes references to non-existent sources or has inaccurate references.
• Aggregator. The work is properly referenced, but there is almost no original contribution.
• Find-replace. The main content of the source is preserved, and only keywords and phrases are replaced.
• Re-Tweet. The work is properly referenced but relies too heavily on the wording and/or structure of the original source.

Manuscripts should not contain plagiarism. The Editorial Board will reject manuscripts if they contain any form of plagiarism. The presence of plagiarism in an article indicates the unethical and unprofessional behaviour of the author (co-authors). It is likely to undermine reputation of the author (co-authors) and the publisher.

The Editorial Board of All Journal Of Exercise Science & Physical Activity Reviews (JESPAR) journals will reject manuscript if it contains any form of plagiarism.

Other types of research violations

In addition to plagiarism, various actions are recognised as research misconduct, including:

• Manipulation of authorship or disregard for the role of other researchers in publications (incomplete or incorrect identification of the article authors, incorrect distribution of the author’s contribution and specification of the roles of authors, co-authors and other research participants).
• Submitting or publishing the same study in two journals, either simultaneously or several years apart.
• Excessive publication. It means the practice of submitting separate parts of the same research to several journals or presence of already published works without citing, authorizing or justifying them. Self-plagiarism is considered as excessive publication, which involves reusing or appropriating ideas from previously published works without proper authorship indication. Often these actions can be unintentional. The author must indicate the fact of application of previously published research materials. It allows to assess the degree of use of such information by the author.
• Citation manipulations. The following cases are citation manipulations: overciting of own works to raise personal indexation in research bases; overciting of works in the same journal to raise its indexation in research bases; overciting for honorary reasons to raise indexation of journal editors-in-chief or famous scientists.
• Data fabrication. Use of fake data, intentional change of research results, disorder of data collecting and processing, citing of fake works or reference manipulations.
• Falsification. Data manipulations, violations of equipment settings to benefit from the research results, changes of processed data, etc.
• Reprinting significant parts of early publications, including translations, without proper acknowledgment or citation of the original.
• Concealment (silencing) of research results.
• Allowing sponsors to compromise the independence of the research process or the reporting of results in such a way as to formulate or disseminate a biased view of the research.
• Unjustified expansion of the research bibliography.
• Maliciously accusing the researcher of committing a misdemeanour (crime) or other violations.
• Distortion of scientific achievements.
• Exaggeration of the importance and practical significance of the results.
• Delaying or unnecessarily complicating the work of other researchers (sabotage).
• Abuse of official position to encourage the violation of research integrity.
• Ignoring alleged violations of research integrity by other persons, covering up a misdemeanour (crime) or other violations by institutions.
• Creating or supporting journals that neglect the research quality control (“predatory journals”).

Procedure for handling allegations of research misconduct.

If ethical violations are detected during submission, review or publication of the manuscript, the Editorial Board applies the following procedures:

• Informing all authors and/or reviewers about discovered facts of research violations, non-compliance with publication ethics and misconduct.
• Publishing an official notice with a detailed misconduct description on the journal website.
• Terminating the consideration and review of the manuscript (if it has not yet been published) or retracting the article (if the facts of unethical behaviour are discovered already after its publication).
• If the discovered facts of ethical violations on the part of the authors are significant, the Editorial Board reserves the right to inform the organisations where the authors work, the institutions that funded the research or other research bodies.

In case of violating the Research misconduct policy, the following sanctions may be imposed:

1. Immediate rejection of the manuscript and any subsequent manuscripts submitted to any Journal Of Exercise Science & Physical Activity Reviews (Jespar) journal.
2. Prohibition on manuscript submission for 1-2 years.
3. Prohibition on holding the editor position and performing reviewer duties in any Journal Of Exercise Science & Physical Activity Reviews (Jespar) journal.