Ethics in Scientific Publication: Plagiarism and other Scientific Misconduct

Abstract

As doctors, we need to be guided by our oath that we took upon graduation from medical school, and by the Hippocratic Oath. Those of us practicing in Oman should also be guided by the "Oman Code of Medical Ethics", and the International Code of Medical Ethics published by the World Medical Association in 1949. All these, either directly refer to, or include the ethics of speaking and publishing the truth in medicine. Those of us involved in medical journal publishing unfortunately ostensibly observed medical publication misconduct far more often than we would wish. Such occurrence is perpetuated by the concept of "publish or perish" that is rampant in many universities and particularly so in Western universities. Studies have shown that the incidence of plagiarism is higher among industrialized countries of Western Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific compared to Arab countries and other emerging economies. This is according to Errami and Garner in their now famous study "A Tale of two Citations". An ethical manuscript is one which is free from any form of plagiarism, duplicate publication, ghost authorship, copyright laws infringement, any form of bias or conflict of interest, fabrication or falsification, and perhaps most importantly, an ethical manuscript should be free of unethical research. An ethical manuscript must be free from any forms of scientific misconduct mentioned above, but plagiarism is by far the commonest of these.

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