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 persons 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.

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 students
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.