Anti-Plagiarism Policy

RIC does not encourage any form of plagiarism. Therefore, we recommend reviewing the entire content of your article before submitting it, as well as carefully using citations and references.

This journal penalizes plagiarism for:

  • Citing sources without consulting them and omitting references that contradict one's own research.
  • Intentionally copying someone else's ideas, words, data, images, and other resources to present them as one's own; as well as not citing one's own previously published articles and taking excerpts from those works.
  • Intentionally omitting key citations, ignoring related works, and local references due to academic rivalries.
  • Segmenting research (salami), when the researcher reuses excerpts from previous research without clearly referencing the original publication.
  • Employing duplicate publication with the use of full or partial results of a research project, where the authors also change the title and abstract, translate it into another language, and add co-authors.
  • Fabricate and manipulate data.

The following publications will not be considered duplicates: abstracts and posters presented at conferences, results presented at scientific meetings, records of uninterpreted clinical trials, and dissertations and theses compiled in university repositories. Translations of previously published articles will not be accepted. If a previous version of an article has been published, this must be expressly indicated in the Comments to the Editor when submitting the article. The new version must contain substantial improvements. The Editorial Board reserves the right to publish or not publish the proposal under these circumstances.

To achieve this objective, all articles received by the RIC are verified by the editors before publication using tools such as Google (text), Turnitin (text), and TinEye (image) to detect possible plagiarism. Reviewers and members of the Editorial Board can also detect the occurrence of malpractice during the publication process.

Properly cited articles with a similarity level of 24% or less will be accepted. If the similarity level is between 25% and 49%, the author will be notified, and the article will be rejected for any necessary modifications, if applicable. However, if the percentage exceeds 75%, the article will be rejected without the right to resubmit. Results with 100% similarity will be considered plagiarism. Regardless of the similarity percentage shown by the tool's report, it will always be analyzed by a specialist who will arrive at conclusions.

If plagiarism is detected, and after a committee of experts is formed to investigate and issue a ruling, steps will be taken to ensure that the accused(s) are protected until their involvement in the incident is conclusively proven. Individuals accused of wrongdoing will be protected against false or anonymous accusations. The latter will only be considered if there is sufficient evidence to investigate the matter. Regulations will be established for those found to be involved, including a three-year sanction (minimum penalty) withholding publication rights in RIC. Our Editorial Board reserves the right to inform the authors' institutions of any plagiarism detected before or after publication. If plagiarism is detected after publication, a retraction of the article will be issued, as appropriate.

Readers and the entire scientific community are requested to report any detected plagiarism or malpractice by sending the article title, author(s) name(s), volume, issue, and year of publication, as well as details of the investigation, to our email address ric.gtm@infomed.sld.cu. Steps will be taken to ensure the protection of the person reporting the allegation.