Plagiarism and health promotion: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

Abstract

Without mentioning the resignations of several German ministers, today we are forced to admit that the practice of plagiarism in the domain of health is not a rare one. Plagiarism and duplicate publications represent 25% of fraud-related retractions for articles referenced by PubMed (1). The field of health promotion clearly has not been spared from this scourge. And yet, it seems to me that those associated with the Ottawa Charter, be they in universities or in scientific journals, have not yet confronted the issue head on. It has nothing to do with ‘modern times’ as this practice seems to go back centuries, although the advent of the internet and powerful software allows us to catch fraud more easily. Health promotion professors who bring up the issue of plagiarism in their classes are rare indeed. The scientific journals associated with the IUHPE are all concerned with ethical issues, but few if any have adopted a clear policy with respect to plagiarism, taking the time to thoroughly inform readers and potential authors. Yet