Plagiarism Statement

To plagiarise is “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own: use (another's production) without crediting the source: to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source”.[1] Plagiarism is said to occur when any material (for example, data, ideas, tables, figures, key phrases or larger sections of text) is taken from an existing publication (for example, a book, report, article or website) and presented as the authors' own original work. Copying text from another work and merely replacing a few words is also considered plagiarism, as is reusing material from earlier work by the same authors.

It is not plagiarism to include a short quotation from a previous work, as long as it is clear that the text is a quotation and a proper reference to the original is given. It is also not plagiarism to present in the authors' own words information and concepts from previous publications, as long as the sources are referenced.

All manuscripts submitted to the SSMJ will be screened for plagiarism during the editorial process. Articles found to contain significant plagiarism are likely to be rejected. In less serious cases, the editorial team will contact the authors to remind them of SSMJ's plagiarism policy and to invite the authors to re-submit their manuscript after making appropriate changes. If plagiarism is discovered after publication, the article will be retracted and a statement published in the next issue.

A practical example

Consider the task of writing an Introduction for an article about mortality amongst children under five years of age. A source of general information that might be useful for the Introduction is the relevant World Health Organization (WHO) fact sheet. The first two paragraphs of the Overview in this document are:

"Substantial global progress has been made in reducing childhood mortality since 1990. The total number of under-5 deaths worldwide has declined from 12.6 million in 1990 to 5 million in 2020. Since 1990, the global under-5 mortality rate has dropped by 60%, from 93 deaths per 1000 live births in 1990 to 37 in 2020. This is equivalent to 1 in 11 children dying before reaching age 5 in 1990, compared to 1 in 27 in 2020.

While the global under-5 mortality rate (U5MR) fell to 37 (35–40) deaths per 1000 live births in 2020, children in sub-Saharan Africa continued to have the highest rates of mortality in the world at 74 (68–86) deaths per 1000 live births – 14 times higher than the risk for children in Europe and North America."[2]

It would be plagiarism to write:

The global under-5 mortality rate (U5MR) has fallen by 60%, from 93 deaths per 1000 live births in 1990 to 37 in 2020. But children in sub-Saharan Africa continued to have the highest U5MR in the world, 74 deaths per 1000 live births.[2]

Because these sentences have been copied from the original with only very minor alteration.

But it would not be plagiarism to write:

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the thirty years between 1990 and 2020, the global under-5 mortality rate (U5MR) fell from 93 to 37 deaths per 1000 live births.[2] But in sub-Saharan Africa the U5MR is estimated to be double the global rate (74 per 1000 live births), and even higher in South Sudan, 99 per 1000 live births.[2,3]

Because the information has been presented in the author's own words, with some interpretation (mentioning WHO, "thirty years", "double"), and with some additional information from another source (the South Sudan figure).

References

  1. Merriam-Webster, Inc. Merriam-Webster online dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com 
  2. World Health Organisation. Child mortality (under 5 years). https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/levels-and-trends-in-child-under-5-mortality-in-2020 
  3. World Health Organisation.  Under-five mortality rate (per 1000 live births). https://data.who.int/indicators/i/E3CAF2B/2322814