A case of plagiarism: lessons for editors, authors, reviewers, readers, and plagiarists.

In common usage, a retraction is a statement that relates that something previously said or written is not true or correct. In the biomedical literature, a retraction refers to articles that were previously published and later recanted by means of a formal published notice issued by the editor of the journal that published the offending document. The specific term, retraction, refers to the entirety of an article being recanted and is only issued with clear evidence of “pervasive error, nonreproducible research, scientific misconduct, or duplicate publication.” A “retraction in part” may be issued when the misconduct involves only a minor portion of the article. The National Library of Medicine indexes retractions upon notification by the journal. The events that transpired between the initial notification to CCN regarding this incident and the final resolution of this misconduct that the retraction notice represents offer sometimes painful and unpleasant, yet necessary and informative object lessons for professional nursing journal editors, authors, reviewers, readers, and plagiarists.