Letter of Apology and Notice of Retraction

It has come to my attention that the paper I authored and published in the Croatian Medical Journal three years ago (1) was flagged as problematic in an international database (http://etblast.org). The published paper indeed contains large portions of wording and sections copied from another article (2). At the time, I was an inexperienced author, not aware that what I did was against the standards of scientific and academic honesty. My English and my writing skills were not up to the level needed to present my work in a due manner and in my own words, so I used the words of another author to describe the methodology applied in my study and simply cited the source. My only wish was to publish the results of my 6-year-long research and the development of a computer application for the evaluation of intensive care unit (ICU) performance (1). The results were original, based on the patient data collected at the ICU where I work.

As I have learned a lot since then I came to realize that what I did indeed was plagiarism. It was inadvertent, due to my ignorance and poor judgment, but it was plagiarism nevertheless. It has cast doubt on the originality of my work and my integrity, which I have never intended to compromise, as I have never intended to compromise my coauthors, the authors whose words I copied, the journal where the original article was originally published, or the Croatian Medical Journal and its editors.

I apologize to Dr Saulius Vosylius, Dr Jurate Sipylaite, and Dr Juozas Ivaskevicius, the authors whose knowledge and words I appropriated (2). I also apologize to Professor Brian Pollard, Professor Thomas Crozier, Professor Jean-Pierre Haberer, and Dr Chris Pomfrett from the European Journal of Anaesthesiology for breaching the copyright of their Journal. I apologize to the editors of the Croatian Medical Journal for using their trust and submitting an original contribution that fell short of originality. Most of all, I apologize to the national and international research community for presenting a part of another authors’ work as my own.

Although the data presented in the article are original, I respectfully ask that the article “Desa K, Sustic A, Zupan Z, Krstulovic B, Golubovic V. Evaluation of single intensive care unit performance by Simplified Acute Physiology Score II System. Croat Med J 2005;46:964-9.” be retracted.