Plagiarism Policy
Every submission to Chronicles of Medical and Clinical Case Reports must be the authors' own scholarly work, with earlier sources clearly credited. Editors may compare a manuscript with published literature and may decline or investigate work that copies, recycles or invents material.
What is not acceptable
- Copying text, tables or figures from another source without quotation and citation.
- Close paraphrasing that keeps another author's structure and ideas without credit.
- Reusing substantial parts of the authors' own published paper without saying so.
- Submitting the same case, or a case that overlaps so much that it is the same report, to more than one journal at the same time.
- Altering images so that they misrepresent the clinical findings, or presenting fabricated clinical detail as fact.
What authors should do
Cite the papers, books and guidelines that informed the report. If a figure or table comes from another publication, obtain permission and state the source in the legend. If the case was presented at a meeting, or a short version appeared as an abstract, say so in the manuscript and in the submission form. Limited overlap in standard methods wording is understood; the clinical narrative and discussion must be written for this journal.
How concerns are handled
A manuscript with unexplained overlap may be returned for revision, rejected, or held while the editors ask the authors to respond. Serious or repeated problems can be raised with the authors' institution. If the problem is found after publication, the journal may publish a correction or a retraction, as described in the corrections and retractions policy.
Readers who believe a published article copies another work should write to the editorial office through the contact form and include the overlapping sources.