Plagiarism

The definition of plagiarism in the Cambridge Dictionary is “the process or practice of using another person's ideas or work and pretending that it is your own.” The history of plagiarism is long, and the first known instance of plagiarism involved the work of the Roman poet Martial. The term “plagiarism” originates from the Latin word plagium, which means “kidnapping.” Thus, plagiarism is a serious crime, especially in modern society, with its emphasis on ideas and creativity.

The most common types of plagiarism in modern scholarly publishing are direct plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, paraphrasing plagiarism, citing incorrectly, self-plagiarism, and citing a non-existent source. Regardless of their reasons for doing so, by committing plagiarism, authors make the biggest mistake of their career, and they should take all moral and legal responsibility for doing so. Inadvertent plagiarism can occur in routine circumstances without awareness of the definition of plagiarism. Therefore, researchers and authors should always be alert and careful about plagiarism and take responsibility for their own works.

Last year, another publisher raised concerns about plagiarism in an article published in The Journal of Periodontal & Implant Science (JPIS), and this case turned out to involve direct plagiarism of others' work. Most fundamentally, the responsibility for plagiarism in that article lies with the authors who submitted it as their own work. However, we are also not free from blame for publishing the plagiarized study in our journal. As soon as the plagiarism was confirmed by the JPIS editorial board, we processed the retraction of the article, although some articles had unfortunately already cited the plagiarized article. All manuscripts submitted to JPIS undergo a plagiarism check before review. After this event, the JPIS editorial board has discussed the necessity of follow-up checks after articles are published. We will establish such a system for similar papers that we will use to combat plagiarism actively in the future. We apologize to the authors of the original article and to the readers of the journal throughout the world. JPIS respects and supports the originality and creativity of authors' work.