Thursday, December 20, 2007

Editorial

Plagiarism: Digging to the root of the problem
Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Volume 61, Issue 4, October 2006, Page 431
Frances Boquiren, Francis Creed and Colin Shapiro

Recently, the Journal of Psychosomatic Research received a paper titled "Psychological impact of cancer on patient’s family members" from authors Gulseren Unal and Figen Govsa of the Faculty of Medicine at Ege University, Izmir, Turkey. During the review process, one of the referees discovered that the authors had plagiarized paragraphs from the article “The psychological impact of a cancer diagnosis on families: the influence of family functioning and patients' illness characteristics on depression and anxiety” that was published in Psycho-oncology in 2004 [1]. The authors were contacted but no initial response was given. As a result, the paper was not considered further.