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Editorial

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Editorial

Vasc Specialist Int 2020; 36(2): 53-56

Published online June 30, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5758/vsi.203621

Copyright © The Korean Society for Vascular Surgery.

Plagiarism in Medical Scientific Research: Can Continuing Education and Alarming Prevent This Misconduct?

Seung-Kee Min

Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Correspondence to:Seung-Kee Min, Division of Vascular Surgery, Seoul National University Hospital, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, Korea
Tel: 82-2-2072-0297, Fax: 82-2-766-3975, E-mail: skminmd@snuh.org, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1433-2562

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Body

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into

something better, or at least something different.”

- T.S. Eliot [The Sacred Wood] -

Plagiarism should be recognized as a long-standing major misconduct in medical scientific research. There are numerous stories of plagiarism in creative fields, such as literature, music, art, movies, and science. The word “plagiarism” was derived from the Latin word “plagiarius,” which means “kidnapper” [1]. Plagiarism can be translated as stealing of words, rip-off, piracy, or knockoff. The World Association of Medical Editors defines plagiarism as “the use of others’ published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) without attribution or permission, and presenting them as new and original rather than derived from an existing source.” [2].

Although there are debates regarding modified concepts of imitation, templating, parody, or homage, plagiarism in medicine is considered a form of misconduct. Plagiarism is an ethical issue at its core but is frequently accompanied by copyright infringement, which is a legal issue resulting in punishment. Why is plagiarism a major issue for medical authors? The essence of good scientific writing should be accuracy and honesty. However, extensive plagiarism can occur in the medical field due to the concept of “publish-or-perish,” and many researchers plagiarize intentionally or unintentionally for new appointments or promotions in their academic career, hoping to acquire funds or establish a reputation.

Our journal, Vascular Specialist International (VSI), has a strict policy of anti-plagiarism, and our editors do our best to detect and prevent plagiarism, which is clearly demonstrated in the instruction for authors [3]. We perform a similarity check with iThenticate® (Oakland, CA, USA), a plagiarism-screening tool, for all submitted manuscripts; subsequently, editors review the degree and contents of similarity in detail. If we detect any indication of plagiarism, an e-mail is sent to the corresponding author explaining the similarity and requesting a revised version. If the author’s response is acceptable, we process the article for peer-reviews. If any argument regarding plagiarism develops at any time during the publication process or after publication, we follow the steps suggested by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) [4]. When a major instance of plagiarism is revealed, strict disciplinary actions are taken against the plagiarists, including retraction of article, suspension of authors, a notice of retraction and apology letter from journal editors, and informing the author’s superior or research governance at the author’s institution, which may result in loss of funding and expulsion from their job.

During recent years working as the editor-in-chief of VSI, I have encountered several cases of plagiarism, which were primarily unintentional, due to a lack of knowledge about plagiarism. I think the concept and forms of plagiarism should be taught to all the members involved in journal publication, including authors, peer-reviewers, editors, and readers. For authors, knowing and avoiding plagiarism during scientific writing is important. For peer-reviewers, it is important to detect plagiarism, as well as inappropriate or false citation in order to improve the honesty and quality of an article. For editors, preventing, detecting, and punishing plagiarists is increasingly important. Furthermore, readers should report any suspected plagiarism of both their works and others to the concerned journal editors or publishers. All these efforts can prevent plagiarism and establish a good research environment with creativity, honesty and justice in medical fields.

Issues of plagiarism include plagiarism of text, graph, or figures, plagiarism of idea, mosaic plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and duplicate publication. I hope that all authors, reviewers, and readers can understand the different types of plagiarism through the recent cases detected and prevented in VSI.

1) Plagiarism of ideas

If authors use an idea, thought, or invention from the work of others and present it as their own without proper acknowledgment, it is considered plagiarism of ideas. This type of plagiarism is incredibly difficult to detect. For example, after rejecting a particular article, an editor or reviewer may take the idea in the rejected work, write a new article, and publish it in another journal under their own name. Similar instances are frequently seen among postgraduate students who steal ideas for their thesis articles from existing research. They would take a thesis several years old and present it as new without acknowledgement.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Seung-Kee Min has been the editor-in-chief of Vasc Specialist Int since 2019.

References

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