Editorial: Self-plagiarism prevention and management at 'Nursing & Health Sciences'

Abstract

As we are all aware through high profile cases where politicians have sought to use effective rhetoric to enhance their sway with the public and later been determined to have copied the ideas and words of others, or where there has been dispute regarding the difference between plagiarism and homage in the creative arts (Edwards, 2007), an accusation of plagiarism can at the very least tarnish a person's public reputation (Clement & Wrublewski, 2016). In academic life, it can damage an individual's career and bring whole bodies of work and entire disciplines and professions into disrepute (Murphy et al., 2014). The consequences of poorly managed plagiarism can range from work being attributed to authors inappropriately, resulting in injustice to those who have performed the work, to skewing the findings of meta-analyses, as well as false perceptions about research publications having an impact on promotion and research funding processes (Helgesson & Eriksson, 2015, p. 98). Although plagiarism should not be confused with copyright infringement, which includes the right to distribute and copy work, as journal editors we need to be cognizant of the potential for work that is presented as original to compromise both the authenticity and originality of the work presented.