The problems of incorrect citation and/or plagiarism are frequent in the writing and academic publishing process. Standards of bibliographic citation are widespread and many plagiarism detection programs are available free of charge on the Internet, however, there is no foolproof mechanism to fully identify cases of plagiarism or “copy-paste”, which is why editorial policies are based on trust in the authors’ ethics.When judging the existence or not of plagiarism in an academic article, there are no unique criteria. It is talked of intentional and unintentional plagiarism, where each publisher has the autonomy to define the aspects assessed in a case of plagiarism and the corresponding penalties. This article aims to offer publishers some reflections on editorial policies and some guidelines to discern the intentionality of the author facing a situation of plagiarism.