A tale of two citations

摘要

With apologies to Charles Dickens, in the world of biomedical publications, "It is the best of times, it is the worst of times". Scientific productivity, as measured by scholarly publication rates, is at an all-time high1. However, high-profile cases of scientific misconduct remind us that not all those publications are to be trusted - but how many and which papers? Given the pressure to publish, it is important to be aware of the ways in which community standards can be subverted. Our concern here is with the three major sins of modern publishing: duplication, co-submission and plagiarism. It is our belief that without knowing whether these sins are becoming more widespread, the scientific community cannot hope to effectively deter or catch future unethical behaviour.