Plagiarism in Review.

Abstract

1. Mark Weems, MD 1. Associate Editor For more than 35 years, the editors of Pediatrics in Review (PIR) have turned to content experts to write review articles that can be used by pediatricians in daily practice. We also understand that our “Index of Suspicion” and “Visual Diagnosis” sections provide opportunities for young physicians to build their portfolios, and we welcome case submissions by junior faculty and residents when supervised by more experienced pediatricians. When I joined the Editorial Board 2 years ago as the first PIR editorial fellow, I was shocked by a disturbing trend in submitted articles: plagiarism. Plagiarism is not unique to PIR. In fact, it is so prevalent in medical literature that Miguel Roig’s 2013 PubMed search for “plagiarism” resulted in 1,086 articles. (1) As of August 24, 2016, that number has risen to 1,461. Plagiarism threatens the authority of our peer-reviewed journal and puts our publisher, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), at risk for copyright infringement. In an effort to prevent plagiarized material from being published, all manuscripts submitted to PIR are screened with Crossref Similarity Check, powered by iThenticate (Crossref, Lynnfield, MA, and Turnitin, LLC, Oakland, CA) and compared against a database containing more than 60 billion documents. This process is described in our author instructions, but we continue to receive plagiarized manuscripts. Therefore, we feel it is important to share some deeper insight into the issue of plagiarism. Reading through a small selection of the 1,461 …