Cumhuriyet Dental Journal

Abstract

Plagiarism, taking written material such as language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions of other authors without adequate citation or representing of them as one's own original work, is one of the most common types of misconduct in a scientific publication.1 According to Wager,2 there is a difference between a standard phrase and original use. Standard phrases such as “The specimens were mounted in the custom jig of a universal testing machine” or “The specimens were divided into three groups (n=10) according to surface treatments” should not be accepted as plagiarism, although all these examples contain more than 6 words and may be seen verbatim in many texts. We, as the editors, must distinguish between standard phrases and original usage when considering plagiarism. In addition, major plagiarism is being decribed as copying of >100 words without citation and copying of <100 words is named minor plagiarism.2 Even when the author use his/her own words from a previous paper in a new manuscript, he/she should limit this into 30% rule in order to stay away from self-plagiarism.3 Nevertheless, Habibzadeh and Shashok advocated that many paper has been published in a year and it will not be possible to prevent text similarity in the near future.4 In Cumhuriyet approach, authors have to be encouraged to write their own sentences rather than simply copy from other sources. Cumhuriyet Dental Journal announces that every accepted manuscript will be routinely monitored for plagiarism by using the iThenticate software program. I owe a 'Thank you' to every author of Cumhuriyet Dental Journal for their hard work to avoid unethical approach in their paper. Hope to meet in the next issue. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hakan Akin Editor-in-Chief Cumhuriyet Dental Journal