Plagiarism Statement

The editorial board of the journal is committed to publishing only original material, i.e., material that has neither been published elsewhere, nor is under review elsewhere. The journal “Baltic Journal of Legal and Social Sciences” uses software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Manuscripts in which plagiarism or textual borrowings are found without reference to the original source are rejected by the editorial board for publication in the journal.

Publishing House "Baltija Publishing" advocates adherence to the principles of ethics and integrity of science, which is why it has chosen developed by the Polish company Plagiat, a reliable partner in ensuring the scientific publications quality. The articles are checked for plagiarism using the software StrikePlagiarism.com.

Besides software, manuscripts are additionally tested using the powerful Similarity Check service initiated by the PILA publishers association and embedded in CrossRef international scientific and research information register. This service is developed for publishers to prevent scientific and professional plagiarism; it consists of Similarity Check and the iThenticate tool, which compares the author's work with the database contents and shows similarities or similar text for further review of the academic paper.

Plagiarism implies the use another author's work without permission or acknowledgement. Plagiarism may have different forms from copying word by word to rewriting. While defining plagiarism the following definitions are taken into account:

Literal copying
Copying the work word by word, in general or in parts, without permission or acknowledgement of the source. Literal copying is clearly plagiarism and is easily detected by plagiarism software.

Substantial copying
Replicating substantial part of the work without permission and confirmation of the source. In determining what is "substantial", both the quantity and the quality of the copied content are relevant. Quality is measured by relative value of copied text comparing to the whole text. Where the essence of the work was copied, even not very big part of it, plagiarism is identified.

Paraphrasing
Copying may be made without literal replicating, used in the original work. This type of copying is known as paraphrasing and it may be the most difficult type of plagiarism to reveal. Plagiarism in all its forms is unacceptable and will lead to immediate rejection of the paper along with possible sanctions against authors.

The editorial board of the journal judge any case of plagiarism on its own merits. If plagiarism is detected, either by editors or reviewers at any stage before publication of a manuscript, the author(s) will be alerted asking him/her to either rewrite the text or quote the text exactly and cite the original source.