Plagiarism

Plagiarism, the use of text and ideas from published works without proper permission or citation, is difficult to detect since the whole text should be searched and compared to literature databases. Nevertheless, this process has become simpler with the advent of web-based technologies and more powerful search tools. Recently, a case of plagiarism was detected in an invited manuscript submitted to the Journal of the Korean Medical Association. In the withdrawn manuscript, there were figures and figure legends copied from other papers with neither permission nor citation. Only the citation is enough to use content, figures, or tables from other papers when the original journal is open access with Creative Commons License. Otherwise, to use such data, it is essential to obtain permission from that paper's journal publisher. If plagiarism is detected after publication, the author will face harsh disciplinary action before the office of research integrity in his or her institute. Also, the paper may be retracted by the editor. This is the first time that Editorial Board has detected plagiarism before publication. Screening for plagiarism and other ethical violations will continue so that we can pursue the status of the representative journal of Korean physicians and develop a positive reputation for Korean science internationally by maintaining the utmost quality and integrity in our publications.