BNAS

Plagiarism Policy

Bulletins of Natural and Applied Sciences (BNAS) strictly upholds academic integrity and originality in all published works. Plagiarism is defined as the intentional or unintentional appropriation of another person’s work—whether text, figures, tables, equations, or illustrations—without proper citation of the original source.

Plagiarism also includes duplicate publication (self-plagiarism), where an author reuses substantial portions of their own previously published material without due acknowledgement. A common form of this is salami-slicing, in which small portions of data are extracted from prior publications and republished incrementally to exaggerate scholarly output.

1. Detection of Plagiarism Before Publication

BNAS discourages plagiarism in all its forms and states this clearly in its Instructions to Authors. All manuscripts submitted to the journal undergo originality screening prior to entering the review process.

The results are classified and handled as follows:

(-) < 15% similarity: The manuscript proceeds to the review process. Minor overlaps are addressed and corrected during peer review.
(-) 15–30% similarity: The manuscript is returned to the author with a detailed similarity report. Authors must revise and resubmit the manuscript after removing or rephrasing plagiarised sections.
(-) > 30% similarity: The manuscript is rejected outright. Authors may choose to revise the work, but any resubmission will be treated as a new submission and subject to the journal’s article processing charges.

2. Detection of Plagiarism After Publication

If plagiarism is discovered after a manuscript has been published in BNAS, the editorial board will take appropriate corrective actions depending on the severity of the case:

< 30% similarity: The published article is retracted. Authors are provided with the plagiarism report and asked to correct the manuscript before resubmission. Resubmitted manuscripts are treated as new submissions and subject to page charges. The revised article will be republished in a new volume or on separate pages to clearly distinguish it from the retracted version.

> 30% similarity: The article is retracted and a formal disclaimer issued. BNAS will not consider the manuscript for republication. Further actions may be taken, including notification of the author’s affiliated institution, research funders, and relevant copyright authorities in the country of origin.