Q: How can I address the journal's comment on the originality of my paper?
I received a reply on originality from the journal, how shall I respond and what I should do next?
Although I appreciate the scientific efforts represented by this work, I regret to inform you that there are some issues with the checking for originality. While some of the overlap is the authors' own, and this is acceptable, verbatim reuse, even of one's own words should be minimal (copyright issues are only one factor). Moreover, there are other passages seemingly taken from articles cited in references. These should be rewritten and the sources should better cited and discussed. These issues need to be resolved prior to continue for peer review. I certainly hope you are able to address these issues and submit an new manuscript. Please note that resubmitting your manuscript does not guarantee eventual acceptance, and that your resubmission will be subject to re-review by the reviewer(s) before a decision is rendered.
The response letter from the journal indicates that your paper was rejected since the automated plagiarism check at the journal end detected a high percentage of similarity with other papers. Of these, some are your own previously published papers and others are papers from your reference list. However, the journal is willing to reconsider your paper if these problems are fixed and have given you the option to resubmit your paper as a new submission once you have paraphrased the parts that have similar content.
Right now, there is no need to respond to the journal. You should first fix the problem and then resubmit it as a new submission. While resubmitting, you can mention your manuscript ID and explain that you were instructed to resubmit the manuscript after making changes.
Now let's come to how you need to rework on your manuscript. First, you should get a plagiarism check done to find out exactly which parts have similar content. There are many plagiarism checkers available online; you should choose one that will give you a detailed plagiarism check report. The report will help you identify the parts that seem to be copied from other papers. You should reword these parts completely and cite the sources in text as well as in the reference list. Once this is done, run another round of plagiarism check. Try to keep the percentage of similar content within 10-15 percent. If it's more than that, paraphrase those parts again. You can then submit the manuscript to the journal once again as a new submission.
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This content belongs to the Journal submission & peer review Stage