From the professional perspective of journal publishing, whether a bilingual (multilingual) publication is suspicious from an ethical point of view has been a topic of debate. Indeed this problem has
In bioscience papers, besides the other scientific misconduct issues, replication of the method section is a common problem because duplication is always being detected in the section Materials and Methods. We editors often receive comments and queries from authors who think that it is a matter of course to copy their own published materials as opposed to copying those of others. How should editors handle such papers with similar content in the method section and how to guide authors in writing the method section without being accused of plagiarism? What is right? What is wrong? Here we studied an example to explain this problem.
Yue-hong(Helen) ZHANGXiao-yan JIAHan-feng LINXu-fei TAN
In 2005, Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE was split formally into two distinct sections making them in fact two separate journals: Journal of Zhejiang Uni- versity-SCIENCE A (JZUS-A) focused on Applied Physics and Engineering; Journal of Zhejiang Univer- sity-SCIENCE B (JZUS-B) focused on Biomedicine, Biochemistry and Biotechnology. Usually,
In recent years we have published many papers discussing how to avoid duplication （plagiarism） in scientific journals （Lin et al., 2009; 2011; Zhang, 2010a; 2010b; Zhang and Jia, 2012; 2013; Zhang and McIntosh, 2012; Jia and Zhang, 2013; Jia et al., 2013; Tan and Zhang, 2013）. Indeed, to prevent plagiarism in scientific publishing, various detecting tools have been widely applied, such as CrossCheck, Turnitin, eBlast and AMLC （academic misconduct literature check） system of China National Knowledge Infra- structure （CNKI）. In recent years, many journals have provided their explicit policies on this issue. For example, on Elsevier＇s website there are detailed instructions entitled For Editors： Questions and Answers on Policies （http：//www.elsevier.com/ editors/perk/questions-and-answers）, and also on our own journals＇ website （http：//www.zju.edu.cn）, there is Instruction for Authors that clearly states that we use CrossCheck to fight against plagiarism and to ensure high ethical standards for all of the submitted papers. In short, as Meddings （2010） exclaims, Credit where credit＇s due： plagiarism screening in scholarly publishing. Stopping plagiarism is the journal edi- tors＇ responsibility （Zhang and McIntosh, 2012）.
Yue-hong(Helen) ZHANGXiao-yan JIAHan-feng LINXu-fei TAN
