Plagiarism: a plague in medical writing!

Abstract

Scholarly writings have been rendered mandatory in career pursuits in many countries, including Pakistan. Writing for academic journals has thus been rendered highly competitive. The practice, however, faces several challenges ranging from gift authorship to falsification and gross fabrication; plagiarism is the commonest in this list.1
Oxford English Dictionary defines plagiarism as “the action or practice of taking someone else’s work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one’s own; literary theftâ€.2 The word plagiarism roots from Greek word “Plagiarie†which means “abductionâ€. According to Vessal et al, plagiarism pertains to the act of “appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate creditâ€.3
Plagiarism may be found in any section of the manuscript and may involve text, tables and/or figures. Plagiarism is encountered in different forms, with some being barely understood by even a candid writer. A brief description of various forms of plagiarism is given here:
Extensive Copy-paste Verbatim plagiarism: Copying someone else’s words, word-for-word, without due referencing is called verbatim plagiarism.4 Even citing such text does not nullify plagiarism; it must be closed in parentheses to make it obvious as someone else’s words. This kind of plagiarism has been effectively encountered with the help of similarity index checking softwares, including Turnitin, iThenticate, CrossCheck, eTBLAST and Plagramme etc.5
Mosaic plagiarism (Patchy Plagiarism): This type of plagiarism refers to the blend of ones’ own words with those of original author’s, without referencing.4 A similarity of more than 10% is generally regarded as plagiarism.6
Paraphrasing: This encompasses the process of rewriting someone else’s ideas in one’s own words, without referencing.7 This kind of plagiarism evades the similarity index checking softwares mentioned above and can only be caught on manual interpretation by an astute reader.
Self-plagiarism: This pertains to re-publication of one’s own ideas or data that has already been published. The act is regarded unlawful because it distorts scientific record.8 It should, however, not to be confused with publication of extension in data, as is usually seen in longitudinal studies, of a previously published work. In such an instance, reference to the original data and the association of current publication to the previous one is justified.9 Self-plagiarism is further classified into the following subtypes:
Duplication: Submission of manuscript mostly identical to a previous one. This kind of plagiarism can be caught with similarity index checking softwares and can be handled employing Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines.10
Augmentation: Publishing data which adds to a previously disclosed one, without due referencing.
Segmentation: Also known as Salami publication, segmentation plagiarism operates on the concept of slicing the original data into “minimal publishable unitâ€.11 This type of plagiarism is very difficult to apprehend. Splitting the data is, however, allowed if it is carried out to present to different sets of readers from their respective platforms.7
Plagiarism may be committed deliberately or unintentionally; either one is unlawful. Execution of intentional plagiarism is obvious and self-explanatory. Unintentional plagiarism refers to the unplanned act of incorrect citation or inappropriate paraphrasing of someone else’s work.12
Plagiarism, as discussed above, may vary from the mild ones with little scientific or professional harm to the ones with serious repercussions. Accordingly, the penalties posed range from seeking a mere apology letter or retraction of the article to indictment of the authors with legal charges.7
Seeing the details provided above, it seems rather difficult to counteract plagiarism on most of the occasions. The similarity index checking softwares can tackle only a few types of plagiarism. Nevertheless, these may always be used at preliminary editorial scrutiny level. An astute reviewer may catch the rather obscure types of plagiarism.12
Abiding by the rule “prevention is better than cureâ€, plagiarism is a curse in medical writing which needs apprehension at the very source. Workshops and awareness programs at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels are a must in this regard. Inculcation of professional and scholarly values in the writer requires promotion at the very core. By far, the most important virtues needed in an author, deterring plagiarism in any form, are “honesty and fair playâ€.