Condemnation to plagiarism

One of the biggest spots of science communication is plagiarism. This despicable practice, although it is practiced by a small percentage of scientists has created many hitches and put under suspicion the serious studies of those engaged in science as a form of knowledge to improve the condition of life on our planet. Plagiarism was one of the dominant themes of the XXI Scientific Publishing Course of the Brazilian Association of Medical Editors (ABEC), held 15-17 May in São José dos Campos, SP, in which the Brazilian Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery (BJCVS) was represented by its Executive Editor, Ricardo Brandau. In his presentation, Marcelo Krokscz, Professor of Scientific Methodology at Fundação Escola de Comércio Álvares Penteado (FECAP) and experts in the field, drew a picture on ethics in science and consequences of plagiarism, as the growing number of articles portrayed. He showed a study published in 2011 in Nature, revealing that the number of retractions has risen 10 times in the previous decade, while in the same period the number of articles published has increased by only 44% in journals indexed in PubMed and Web of Science (http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111005/ full/478026a/box/2.html)[1]. Krokscz and other speakers emphasized the need for scientific publications to be vigilant in curbing the practice, which involves not only plagiarism, but also the self-plagiarism, an issue ignored by many. Among the suggestions are carefully reading of submitted manuscripts by the Editors and Reviewers, and explicit instructions in Guidelines for Authors and use of plagiarism detection software. BJCVS always vehemently repudiated plagiarism and already uses detection software (eTBLAST®) and will leave clear its position in Instructions to Authors. Also, the Journal will include in the submission process of manuscripts a letter that must be signed by the authors, warning of the risks and consequences of plagiarism and self-plagiarism. I ask the Editorial Board of BJCVS to remain vigilant in order to avoid that our journal suffers with this problem. Another point I wish to emphasize is the adoption of CrossRef by BJCVS. The CrossRef is an association of publishers that aims to make the most effective scientific communication. With just a click on a reference duly identified by the DOI in a publication, the researcher has access to the cited article. The citation network currently covers more than 67 million journal articles, in addition to book chapters, data, theses and technical reports[2]. This is a very valuable tool for authors and publishers, which will be paid with funds from the Brazilian Society of Cardiovascular Surgery. A major achievement implanted in our journal was to make it available as APP (application), both for iOS (iPhone, iPad) and Android system (Samsung, Motorola, Sony, and others). Thus, once downloaded the app, the reader can simply access it to find BJCVS articles. The application is available for download on the App Store for iOS, or GOOGLE PLAY for Android.