Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing

Miguel Roig, Ph.D.

ETHICALLY QUESTIONABLE CITATION PRACTICES

• Citations and References

Citations are the notations in the text of a paper that identify the source of our claims, other research and theories mentioned in the paper. Depending on the style of writing used these are typically represented as numbers in parentheses or in superscript (e.g., AMA) or as last names with dates (e.g., APA). The list of references is always found at the end of a paper and these contain sufficient detail for readers to track down copies of these works (e.g., names of the authors, titles of articles or books, journal title, volume number, pagination and year of publication).

• Carelessness in citing sources

References provide a crucial service in scholarly and scientific writing for they allow the reader to explore in more detail a given line of thinking or evidence. For these reasons, it is important that authors strive for accuracy when listing references in manuscripts. Unfortunately, it appears that authors do not always give the proper level of attention to citations and reference sections. In fact, the available evidence suggests that a disproportionate number of errors occur in reference sections even in some of the most prestigious biomedical journals (e.g., Siebers and Holt, 2000).

• The importance of citing the original observation
  
  

Another area of concern is the failure to cite the author who first reports the phenomenon being studied. Apparently, some authors instead cite later studies that better substantiate the original observation. However, as Zigmond and Fischer (2002) note, failure to cite the original report denies the individual who made the initial discovery his/her due credit.

GUIDELINE 14: Authors are strongly urged to double-check their citations. Specifically, authors should always ensure that each reference notation appearing in the body of the manuscript corresponds to the correct citation listed in the reference section and vice versa and that each source listed in the reference section has been cited at some point in the manuscript. In addition, authors should also ensure that all elements of a citation (e.g., spelling of authors’ names, volume number of journal, pagination) are derived directly from the original paper, rather than from a citation that appears on a secondary source. Finally, authors should ensure that credit is given to those authors who first reported the phenomenon being studied.