Plagiarism Policy

The Davao Research Journal (DRJ) upholds the highest standards of academic integrity, originality, and ethical scholarship. Plagiarism in any form constitutes a serious violation of publication ethics and research integrity. This includes, but is not limited to, the unattributed use of another person’s ideas, words, data, figures, tables, or other intellectual property, as well as self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, and inappropriate paraphrasing.

To ensure the originality of submitted manuscripts, all papers undergo plagiarism and similarity detection using plagiarism-detection software before acceptance and publication. Manuscripts with significant similarity to previously published works may be returned to the authors for revision, clarification, or rejection, depending on the nature and extent of the overlap.

As a general guideline, the journal considers an overall similarity index of approximately 15–20% acceptable, provided that the similarities arise primarily from properly cited references, institutional affiliations, standard methodological descriptions, or commonly used technical phrases; and there is no evidence of substantial unattributed copying, intellectual misappropriation, or unethical duplication of previously published work.

In cases where plagiarism, fabricated data, falsified results, duplicate publication, or other forms of research misconduct are identified before or after publication, the journal reserves the right to reject, retract, remove, or correct the article in accordance with established publication ethics guidelines and editorial policies. Authors may also be prohibited from future submissions to the journal depending on the severity of the violation.