Coping with copying

Abstract

If somebody spends several decades in the world of scientific publishing as author, referee and editor, it is difficult to evade certain ethical issues. Researchers are fallible humans, after all, not free of vices like vanity, envy or jealousy. The range is wide from slightly tendentious selection among data to rudely falsified results, from distrait overlooking relevant results of concurrent groups, through cryptomnesia, ‘‘an unconscious plagiarism in which creative ideas expressed as new are actually unrecalled memories of another’s idea’’ (Garfield 1985, p. 407) to straight plagiarism. The definition of plagiarism enjoys a variety of ranges. In the Oxford dictionary, plagiarism is ‘‘the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own’’. It clearly implies a voluntary act of cheating and dishonesty. For the Webster dictionary, plagiarism is ‘‘the act of using another person’s words or ideas without giving credit to that person’’. The difference between the two definitions is subtle but real: In Webster’s sentence, the interpretation may include an act of negligence or simply an accidental omission. Although not equally unethical, both circumstances are serious offences and constitute copyright infringements.