I submitted a research paper to one of the Elsevier journals and got a response from the editor as below:
"The paper has got 23 % similarity in total and from one single paper 10 %. However, if you decide to address the aspects by me, then please develop and submit a new paper to me via the EES system, with a cover letter indicating how you have improved your document"
I checked for plagiarism with the help of Grammarly software and found total 4% similarity with one of my previous papers. That similarity was in two sections (i) where we describe the method and procedure of various tests that we carried out, which can be rephrased only a limited number of times as the settings/steps will stay the same. (ii) References/Bibliograghy at the end of the manuscript, which i don't know what to do with that as we can't rephrase references. Anyway i rephrased (i) which brought down the similarity/plagiarism to 2% and this 2% was lying in References/Bibliography. After rechecking i prepared a cover letter as per the editor's comment explaining all this and resubmitted my paper. Next day i got exactly the response from that editor, not even a character or word different.
"The paper has got 23 % similarity in total and from one single paper 10 %"
Don't understand one thing is there a difference in similarity check with different softwares? Or does the software that these publishers use show exaggerated results?
Secondly, if there is a similarity in writing the setup/procedure of a particular test, how to deal with it. You can rephrase it only a limited number of times?
Thirdly, what to do with the similarity in referencing/bibliography at the end, does the publishers/editors expect us to always look for a different reference or they want us to rephrase even the reference/bibliography?
Thanks for your reply Arshad,
I used Turnitin, which gave almost the similar percentage similarities as was provided by the journal editor. The results that concern me is that Turnitin even checks the page numbers for similarity and that gets counted in your total similarity score. Throughout the manuscript there were various instances where words like "studied the effect of", "Introduction" and "Materials and experimental procedure" were highlighted and counted towards the similarity %age. These are just few examples which i have provided. There were numerous examples like that. Then comes the "materials and methods". If you perform a particular test and that has a same procedure every time you do an experiment. How do you rephrase that? say for example i have to do xrd, i have to provide the steps and settings, in every paper it will be the same now what do i do? That will definitely add to the similarity %age. Turnitin and ithenticate definitely need to work on their algorithms that search out similarity.
The only solution that i have found is to look for journals that don't use Turnitin or ithenticate softwares. I don't want to submit my paper just to get it rejected based on similairy %age which doesn't address these issues of similarity in page number, similarity in headings, similarity in the author names, similarity in your materials and methods. Editors don't seem to bother to check where this similarity is lying, they look at the numbers and reject.
First of all you can go for other software such as "Turn it in" (which most of the journal use) or "viper" that might help you in finding the plagiarism that you are looking for as they are more strong in that sense.
You are right about the procedure, there is a possibility thought that you can write it in more of a abstract way. Don't provide write typical language. Use synonyms.
There is no way that bibliography can be rephrased and publishers don't consider them as well. So problem might be somewhere else.
I'd highly recommend for Turnitin
Thanks for your reply Arshad,
I used Turnitin, which gave almost the similar percentage similarities as was provided by the journal editor. The results that concern me is that Turnitin even checks the page numbers for similarity and that gets counted in your total similarity score. Throughout the manuscript there were various instances where words like "studied the effect of", "Introduction" and "Materials and experimental procedure" were highlighted and counted towards the similarity %age. These are just few examples which i have provided. There were numerous examples like that. Then comes the "materials and methods". If you perform a particular test and that has a same procedure every time you do an experiment. How do you rephrase that? say for example i have to do xrd, i have to provide the steps and settings, in every paper it will be the same now what do i do? That will definitely add to the similarity %age. Turnitin and ithenticate definitely need to work on their algorithms that search out similarity.
The only solution that i have found is to look for journals that don't use Turnitin or ithenticate softwares. I don't want to submit my paper just to get it rejected based on similairy %age which doesn't address these issues of similarity in page number, similarity in headings, similarity in the author names, similarity in your materials and methods. Editors don't seem to bother to check where this similarity is lying, they look at the numbers and reject.
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