Similarity Rate in Kowsar Journals:

The similarity score shows the percentage of plagiarized content in a research paper. We, in all Kowsar journals, examine all our submitted manuscripts using "iThenticate" that matches sources in the Turnitin databases.

Responsibility of Authors for checking any similarity before submission:

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

Role of Reviewers indetecting the similarities in a manuscript:

We recommend reviewers in the peer review process to completely check and control the similarities and guide authors to avoid similarities with other published materials. It is the most important of reviewers and associate editors to check the files based on the screening done by publisher.

What is the acceptance level of similarity in Kowsar journals?

• There is not any pre-defined accepted level of similarity since any sentence in a research paper must be unique with new findings. We believe that science does not need to be repeated even as one sentence. 
• In some of the cases, we don't accept those with more than 8-10% of similarity rate.
• We accept all terms and conditions of the COPE regarding similarity rates and plagiarism and in case, any attempt for plagiarism accompanied with convincing evidence is considered. Accordingly, we act based on the flowcharts and workflows by the COPE.
• The highest responsibility to control and avoid plagiarism is held by the EIC of the journal.
• "Fast reject", "Reject", "Withdraw" and "Retraction" is our approaches for those articles with high similarity rates.

We are checking all manuscripts using iThenticate at least in 2 important steps:

1. Early submission: Our online system detects automatically submission with high similarity rates and prevents submitting them.
2. Before the primary stage of publishing: Just before starting the publishing process (during collection), we will check all accepted manuscripts another time.

• The highest responsibility to control and avoid plagiarism is held by the EIC of the journal.
• "Fast reject", "Reject", "Withdraw" and "Retraction" is our approaches for those articles with high similarity rates.