Ethical Concerns & Plagiarism

Plagiarism is intellectual property theft and will not be tolerated. BJHM defines plagiarism as the unauthorized use of written, spoken, or graphical material belonging to someone other than the author(s). Material quoted directly from another source should be placed in quotation marks, and the page on which the quotation can be found should be listed in the citation. Paraphrased material also must be accompanied by a citation and page reference or a notation of personal communication. In general, extensive use of quotations and paraphrasing is strongly discouraged. Material and data already published by an author in another paper or publicly available report, whether printed or electronic, also may not be quoted, summarized, repeated, or paraphrased without proper attribution.

Every manuscript submitted to BJHM is screened for plagiarism upon submission. If plagiarism, whether intentional or inadvertent, is discovered later in the review or publication process, the incident should be reported immediately to the senior editor, who will verify the facts of the incident and contact the author for an explanation. The author will be given an opportunity to explain the situation and correct the problem in a manuscript or retract a published paper. Should an author decline to correct the problem in a manuscript, the manuscript will be rejected for plagiarism without the possibility of resubmission. Further action might be taken depending on the circumstances. Should an author decline to retract a published paper, the editor will publish a retraction.