Plagiarism, self-plagiarism and duplicate publication

As defined by the Office of Research Integrity of the US Department of Health and Human Services (1), research misconduct means fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in proposing, performing or reviewing research, or in reporting research results. Perhaps the most common form of misconduct encountered – or at least recognized – is that of plagiarism. Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit (1). One usually thinks of plagiarism in science as publishing phrases, sentences or passages (without attribution) that were previously published by someone else. Many times, plagiarized passages are taken from the ‘classic’ article on the subject or from a standard textbook. Why individuals committing this misconduct neglect to reference the original source of the material has always been a mystery to me. Indeed, in some instances, the lack of citation may represent an honest mistake, and is therefore not misconduct. But when articles contain a number of plagiarized passages – even whole paragraphs – without attribution and having the passage in question enclosed in quotation marks, it becomes more difficult to accept the ‘honest mistake’ explanation. At The Canadian Journal of Cardiology, we have recognized only two examples of blatant plagiarism in the past 10 years. How many instances have gone unrecognized is unknown, but I suspect that others will come to light over time. It is important to recognize that the most likely means of detecting plagiarism is through the efforts of the expert peer reviewers who happen to recognize a particular passage and check the rest of the paper. Plagiarism may also be detected during the process of systematic reviews of a particular subject, something that often does not occur for many years after publication of the paper in question. Finally, accidental recognition of plagiarism, also sometimes many years after publication, offers some expectation that this dishonest activity will eventually be detected.

Eldon R Smith

More recently, attention has been given to self-plagiarism. This occurs when an author publishes a paper with passages or paragraphs that the same author has previously published, but without attribution. Here, the definitions are more difficult. How many of us have published an article and used text describing methods that were the same as, or nearly identical to, those contained in one of our previous papers using the same techniques? Is it misconduct to use sentences or passages that you have created and published elsewhere? Although the lines of distinction are less clear, there is agreement that there should be attribution with citation to the earlier journal article.

Into this mix enters the phenomenon of duplicate publication. If an author publishes the same article twice, he or she is guilty not only of the misconduct of duplicate publication, but also of plagiarism; this time, the author has plagiarized himself or herself. Unfortunately, such blatant misconduct is not rare. A recent example was discussed on the World Association of Medical Editors listserve, wherein an author published the same paper twice in the same journal, but separated by two years’ time. It is difficult to understand how this can be interpreted as an honest error.

It was just called to our attention that a paper published in the Journal in early 1999 was published in another medical journal approximately six months later. Interestingly, the papers came from different institutions and two different countries, but a common author in both papers was also the corresponding author for the second publication. So this is a case of duplicate publication with many passages and whole paragraphs plagiarized. Thus, it is also a case of self-plagiarism. We are currently investigating this issue and will, in cooperation with the other journal, deal with it in a public way. This will likely involve notification of the offending persons’ institutions, the coauthors, as well as publicly withdrawing at least one of the papers, and any other measures we deem appropriate when the investigation is complete.

Plagiarism is a serious and common form of misconduct in research and in other aspects of academia. The solution is simple in most cases – attribution. Obviously, attribution is not a solution when a student has plagiarized the work of others for an essay submitted as the student’s own. But for literature that is submitted to peer-reviewed periodicals, work from the minds of others must be acknowledged. It does not mean that it is improper to build on the work of others, just that the contribution of the originator be recognized and the original publication be referenced.