Plagiarism, self-plagiarism, scientific misconduct, and VACCINE: Protecting the science and the public

摘要

The scientific publishing community continues to wrestle with the difficult subject of plagiarism, and, more recently, the concept of self-plagiarism. According to Merriam-Webster, “to plagiarize” means: “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own; to use (another's production) without crediting the source; to commit literary theft: present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source [1]. “The US National Science Foundation's (NSF) definition of plagiarism is “the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit [2].” Plagiarism is often considered to only relate to text; however, these definitions also include tables, graphs, images, and the act of taking another person's ideas, which can be more difficult to detect or prove. The definition of plagiarism continues to evolve, and newer issues of self-plagiarism must also be addressed.