Hi Renjith I would like to comment that Acceptable Similarity Index or Plagiarism is not allowed in any form at all but accidentaly for:

1. Research Paper is Less than 4 - 5%.

2. Review Paper is Less than 10%.

3. PHD Thesis is Less than 15% (12% - 15% According to Institution)

Once I have asked an editor in Chief of a reputed journal and he told me above details. He also told me that it depends on journal policy and type of plagiarism.

One thing I want to add that some Supervisors are ZERO TOLERENCE for Plagiarism for their Students.

Regards,

Review Paper

Hi Renjith I would like to comment that Acceptable Similarity Index or Plagiarism is not allowed in any form at all but accidentaly for:

1. Research Paper is Less than 4 - 5%.

2. Review Paper is Less than 10%.

3. PHD Thesis is Less than 15% (12% - 15% According to Institution)

Once I have asked an editor in Chief of a reputed journal and he told me above details. He also told me that it depends on journal policy and type of plagiarism.

One thing I want to add that some Supervisors are ZERO TOLERENCE for Plagiarism for their Students.

Regards,

30% for doctoral thesis in Indian universities . Research paper or review article that depends upon policy of publishers.

I recommend Dr.Ahsan post.

Emad

Yes. Dr. Ahsan is right. For PhD thesis, it's 20% for some institutions

It is hard to exactly get the overlappinag text. This is because journals usually used softwares that "mindlessly" detect redundant texts. Thus, it is the editor job to run an in-depth check of the whole document and the plagiarized passages. A publishing editor of a very well reputed publisher advised for less than 1% from a single source without exceeding 15-20%. I think this is quite reasonable and a good compromise for authors and COPE guidelines.

Dr Siddiqui,

A reputable journal recently limits the acceptable similarities index to 25% for research paper. Isn't this okay?

It should be less than 15 percent.

I agreed with Dr Sdiri.

it should be less than 20 percent.

Many reputable journals consider an index less than 20% as satisfactory. However, for a P.hD Thesis it is placed at 15% for most Nigerian universities.

Depends upon policy of publishers or Institutions.

Is there any criteria (on what basis) followed by Institutions/Publishers/Journals for fixing their own similarity indices for evaluation? Or it is fixed just like that

From an ethical point of view, there should be ZERO similarity. But, this almost impossible unless one invent new words.

Thus, it depends on the editor who can accept up to 20%.

Research paper or review article - that depends upon policy of publishers.

PHD Thesis is Less than 10% (in my region).

Depend upon the plagiarism policy of the journal and university. Normally it should be less than 15% to 20% in all cases.

Depended Universities

Different Universities Different % accepted

Different Universities Different % accepted.

I think it is not right to specify a particular percentage because it depends on the nature of the similarity. For example, imagine that one page out of a hundred is identical with another paper. Would you accept this? (It is 1% afterall). I think each similar portion should be checked rather than having a look at the percentage.

Dr. Ahsan Siddiqui Thank you for the detailed comment.

You mentioned "Acceptable Similarity Index or Plagiarism" in the comment. both are different, isn't it?

Similarity Index is a tool to tackle (the phenomenon named as) Plagiarism.

it depends with the journal you are submitting your work to

it depends on the journal and editor; Generally it should be less than 15%.

I saw the following answer in a Turnitin manual: There are no clear cut rules for this as all work will probably contain some words from other sources. As a guide a returned percentage of below 15% would probably indicate that plagiarism has not occurred. However, if the 15% of matching text is one continuous block this could still be considered plagiarism. A high percentage would probably be anything over 25% (Yellow, orange or red). Again to deem work plagiarised will depend on the students work and the requirements of the report or essay.

can I know that this percentage is for overall work ,I mean the sum or average?

also is that percentage contain references and 1% excluded sources ?

thanks for cooperative

Nice discussion, I strongly agree with Dr. Ahsan Siddiqui ...

Renjith VishnuRadhan -

The point here is to differentiate between plagiarism and similarity. To avoid plagiarism, cite and acknowledge another authors’ work if you use it. To avoid similarity, paraphrase the other authors’ work. Anyway, you should cite, acknowledge and reference sources that you used appropriately.

Dear Renjith VishnuRadhan

The acceptable similarity index:

1. A research paper is must less than 15%.

2. A review paper is must less than 10%.

3. Ph.D. thesis is must less than 20% in which it depends on any registered institution.

Regards.

Hi all,

The problem is similarity checks includes Affiliations of authors as well as References!!!! How can we bring it below even 15%?

Hi all,

What is the acceptable plagiarism for a big survey of about 25 pages,

I am getting 21% in total, but from all the individual sources it is less than 1 percent.

Thanks in advance.

Seems it is a complicated issue. Even if we use our own previous publications and even after changing two or more words per sentence and proper citations .... we get around 25% duplicate score!!!!!!! why?

Professor M. R. Mozafari indeed its a complicated issue. I think we can adjust the settings of turnitin to exclude references from similarity index. What I do personally is to prepare a separate file for turnitin, removing all references, just to check the similarity index and then it becomes quite low. But I think scientific community should come up with unified standards and better solutions to tackle this problem. Plagiarism is not just similarity of text. Sometimes entire idea is copied and paraphrased, but the similarity index doesn't identify it because of different words.

I think that the results obtained by similarity check software need some careful analysis and investigation. As recommended by Turnitin, green color, which is below 25% similarity with the default settings, indicates that there is no excessive similarity that would raise an alarm. More than that would not be acceptable by any respected international journal. In fact, most international journals use a more restrictive criterion based on a 15% limit.

What follows is a detailed analysis by the journal editorial team. This is done by checking each individual source in the similarity report. I believe that sources with below 1% similarity must be excluded since they are mostly occasional sequence of words that can be repeatedly used in similar publications in the field of the checked paper. Sometimes, they may include the authors' names and affiliations. Then, any sources with more than 1% need careful investigation. Sometimes, the submitted paper is a continuation of the authors' previous work which causes the repetition of some sequences of words. This can be tolerated with a limit on the similarity percentage. I believe not exceeding 5% would be acceptable in this case. While if the similarity is found with a work of different authors, this must not exceed 2%. Of course, in both cases, the similarity percentage is accumulated for dispersed text in the paper not a solid chunk.

15-20% should be acceptable