The Value of Originality and Proper Quotation

For a journal article of quality, an excellent concept and significant results are basic requirements. However, a more important factor is how to make a coherent argument. To explain the article's subject, scientific and logical discourse is necessary. In addition, appropriate quotations are needed to support the key claims because quotations situate the claims of the article within a community of scholars and a history of scholarship. However, if some parts of the text, photographs, and tables are used without the original authors' permission in ignorance of standard citation practices, the outcome could be plagiarism, which is considered a serious offence in the international scientific community. Recently, about 50 new English medical journals have been launched in Korea. In addition, more and more local journals have been listed in database indices such as SCI, Scopus, and PubMed. Through this process, plagiarism, which is a signal of an immature publication, should be eradicated. According to the Office of Research Integrity which is a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services-affiliated organization , 26 guidelines for " A guide to ethical writing " are proposed on their website (http://ori.hhs.gov) to avoid plagiarism [1]. These guidelines include the following: references should be identified, and original words, phrases, and clauses should be enclosed in quotation marks. In addition, only necessary and valuable content should be quoted in the original authors' exact words. Primary literature, which is the content of original papers, should be quoted rather than citing the summary of work in secondary sources. Quotations can be classified into three types: verbatim, paraphrasing, and summary. Verbatim means to quote some exact words of the original sentences. Paraphrasing is to change some words while conveying the original concept. Summary is to describe an author's key ideas, generally more briefly than in the original. Verbatim quotations require quotation marks and a citation Paraphrase and Summary should present in original authors' original intent and also require a citation [1]. Although these ethical principles have been publicized in the scientific community, the number of suspected duplicates in the biomedical literature has increased every year [2]. The primary reason is that authors overlook plagiarism when citing other papers. Another reason is that it is difficult to find plagiarism even when examiners evaluate papers carefully. Academic publishers have tried to develop software to check the similarity of new submissions with existing articles, in order to fight plagiarism. At the beginning …