As the title of this question suggests, a manuscript that I submitted was flagged as plagiarized by iThenticate and was rejected by the editor.

The editor claims that the manuscript has 35% similarity with a previous manuscript that I submitted to the same journal. The email made me feel very bad, as the accusations are something that I have intentionally avoided throughout my publications. I also should note that I chose not to write repeated information and instead wrote a summary of some of the methods while citing the mentioned already published work.

Summary about the scope: it's mainly about sensors and machine learning, though both papers have very different goals and methodologies:

• Already published work: usage of many sensors to achieve two goals with machine learning regression and classification.
• Submitted manuscript: usage of one sensor to achieve a completely different goal from the already published work by machine learning classification and to explain the models with explainable machine learning.

We do not have access to iThenticate, but we do have access to Turnitin. The summary:

• Overall, there is 23% similarity with other published work.
• With the paper that the editor mentioned, there is only 8% similarity. The similarity mainly comes from affiliations, references, acknowledgments (funding agency and project number).
• The description of the sensor is flagged as well (name of sensor, company, location).

I have no idea how to do the following:

• To tell my mentors that this happened; I'm afraid that I will be in trouble if I do not sufficiently rebuke the plagiarism accusation.
• To write to the editor to clarify what happened, though I suspect they already checked where the similarity is coming from.

As the title of this question suggests, a manuscript that I submitted was flagged as plagiarized by iThenticate and was rejected by the editor.

The editor claims that the manuscript has 35% similarity with a previous manuscript that I submitted to the same journal. The email made me feel very bad, as the accusations are something that I have intentionally avoided throughout my publications. I also should note that I chose not to write repeated information and instead wrote a summary of some of the methods while citing the mentioned already published work.

Summary about the scope: it's mainly about sensors and machine learning, though both papers have very different goals and methodologies:

• Already published work: usage of many sensors to achieve two goals with machine learning regression and classification.
• Submitted manuscript: usage of one sensor to achieve a completely different goal from the already published work by machine learning classification and to explain the models with explainable machine learning.

We do not have access to iThenticate, but we do have access to Turnitin. The summary:

• Overall, there is 23% similarity with other published work.
• With the paper that the editor mentioned, there is only 8% similarity. The similarity mainly comes from affiliations, references, acknowledgments (funding agency and project number).
• The description of the sensor is flagged as well (name of sensor, company, location).

I have no idea how to do the following:

• To tell my mentors that this happened; I'm afraid that I will be in trouble if I do not sufficiently rebut the plagiarism accusation.
• To write to the editor to clarify what happened, though I suspect they already checked where the similarity is coming from.

As the title of this question suggests, a manuscript that I submitted was flagged as plagiarized by iThenticate and was rejected by the editor.

The editor claims that the manuscript has 35% similarity with a previous manuscript that I submitted to the same journal. The email made me feel very bad, as the accusations are something that I have intentionally avoided throughout my publications. I also should note that I chose not to write repeated information and instead wrote a summary of some of the methods while citing the mentioned already published work.

Summary about the scope: it's mainly about sensors and machine learning, though both papers have very different goals and methodologies:

• Already published work: usage of many sensors to achieve two goals with machine learning regression and classification.
• Submitted manuscript: usage of one sensor to achieve a completely different goal from the already published work by machine learning classification and to explain the models with explainable machine learning.

We do not have access to iThenticate, but we do have access to Turnitin. The summary:

• Overall, there is 23% similarity with other published work.
• With the paper that the editor mentioned, there is only 8% similarity. The similarity mainly comes from affiliations, references, acknowledgments (funding agency and project number).
• The description of the sensor is flagged as well (name of sensor, company, location).

I have no idea how to do the following:

• To tell my mentors that this happened; I'm afraid that I will be in trouble if I do not sufficiently rebuke the plagiarism accusation.
• To write to the editor to clarify what happened, though I suspect they already checked where the similarity is coming from.

Thank you for any and all help!

As the title of this question suggests, a manuscript that I submitted was flagged as plagiarized by iThenticate and was rejected by the editor.

The editor claims that the manuscript has 35% similarity with a previous manuscript that I submitted to the same journal. The email made me feel very bad, as the accusations are something that I have intentionally avoided throughout my publications. I also should note that I chose not to write repeated information and instead wrote a summary of some of the methods while citing the mentioned already published work.

Summary about the scope: it's mainly about sensors and machine learning, though both papers have very different goals and methodologies:

• Already published work: usage of many sensors to achieve two goals with machine learning regression and classification.
• Submitted manuscript: usage of one sensor to achieve a completely different goal from the already published work by machine learning classification and to explain the models with explainable machine learning.

We do not have access to iThenticate, but we do have access to Turnitin. The summary:

• Overall, there is 23% similarity with other published work.
• With the paper that the editor mentioned, there is only 8% similarity. The similarity mainly comes from affiliations, references, acknowledgments (funding agency and project number).
• The description of the sensor is flagged as well (name of sensor, company, location).

I have no idea how to do the following:

• To tell my mentors that this happened; I'm afraid that I will be in trouble if I do not sufficiently rebuke the plagiarism accusation.
• To write to the editor to clarify what happened, though I suspect they already checked where the similarity is coming from.