PLAGIARISM POLICY

All of the manuscripts submitted to International Journal of Counseling and Psychotherapy (IJCP) will be screened for plagiarism using the Turnitin plagiarism detector. The journal wants to ensure that all authors are careful and comply with international standards for academic integrity, particularly on the issue of plagiarism.

Before submitting articles to reviewers, those are first checked for similarity/plagiarism tool, by a member of the editorial team. International Journal of Counseling and Psychotherapy (IJCP) will immediately reject papers leading to plagiarism or self-plagiarism. 

ARTICLE PLAGIARISM LEVEL CATEGORY:
1. Minor. A short section of another article is plagiarized without any significant data or idea taken from the other paper. 
Action: A warning is given to the authors and a request to change the text and properly cite the original article is made
2. Intermediate. A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized without proper citation to the original paper.
Action: The submitted article is rejected, and the authors are forbidden to submit further articles for one year
3. Severe. A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized that involves reproducing original results or ideas presented in another publication
Action: The paper is rejected, and the authors are forbidden to submit further articles for five years.

ARTICLE PLAGIARISM DECISION MAKING POLICY:
1. Similarity Index above 40%: Article Rejected (due to poor citation and/or poor paraphrasing, article outright rejected, NO RESUBMISSION accepted). 
2. Similarity Index (20-39%): Sent back to the author for improvement (provide correct citations to all places of similarity and do a good paraphrasing even if the citation is provided).
2. Intermediate. A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized without proper citation to the original paper.
3. Similarity index equal or Less than 20%: Accepted or citation improvement may be required (proper citations must be provided to all outsourced texts).
3. Severe. A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized that involves reproducing original results or ideas presented in another publication
4. Similarity index equal or Less than 20%: Accepted or citation improvement may be required (proper citations must be provided to all outsourced texts).

Plagiarism occurs when an author takes ideas, information, or words from another source without proper credit to the source. Even when it occurs unintentionally, plagiarism is still a serious academic violation and unacceptable in international academic publications. When the author learns specific information (a name, date, place, statistical number, or other detailed information) from a specific source, a citation is required. (This is only forgiven in cases of general knowledge, where the data is readily available in more than five sources or is common knowledge).

When the author takes an idea from another author, a citation is required even if the author then develops the idea further. This might be an idea about how to interpret the data, either what methodology to use or what conclusion to draw. It might be an idea about broad developments in a field or general information. Regardless of the idea, authors should cite their sources. In cases where the author develops the idea further, it is still necessary to cite the original source of the idea, and then in a subsequent sentence, the author can explain her or his more developed idea.

When the author takes words from another author, citation and quotation marks are required. Whenever four or more consecutive words are identical to a source that the author has read, the author must use quotation marks to denote the use of another author's original words; just a citation is no longer enough.

International Journal of Counseling and Psychotherapy (IJCP) takes academic integrity very seriously, and the editors reserve the right to withdraw acceptance from a paper found to violate any of the standards set out above. For further information, potential authors can contact the journal editorial office.