EDITORIAL 134J Adv Pract Oncol AdvancedPractitioner.com Avoiding Plagiarism in Professional Writing

riting for publi-cation is an ex-cellent way to c o m m u n i c a t e your ideas and knowledge to other readers. Pub-lishing in the Journal of the Ad-vanced Practitioner in Oncology (JADPRO) offers potential authors a venue to convey information in a variety of ways, including case studies, review articles on oncol-ogy subjects and advanced practice, commentary on unique issues af-fecting advanced practitioners, or discussions of new pharmaceutical agents. However, all potential authors must be sure that contributions to JADPRO or any publication contain accurate, well-referenced in-formation and that the paper is written in a professional manner. Avoiding plagiarism is a critical part of the professional approach to writing for scientific publication. What Constitutes Plagiarism? Plagiarism is the act of taking another’s work or ideas and pre-senting them as your own (Cicutto, 2008). Although it may occur be-cause of an author’s lack of understanding regarding what constitutes plagiarism, it is a serious concern in medical publishing. The policy of the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Research Integrity (ORI) is very clear: The ORI believes plagiarism is the theft or misappropriation of intellectual property and a significant copying of another’s work without appropriate attribution (ORI, 2012). There are several types of plagiarism. First, the most common form of plagiarism occurs when an author recreates sentences or paragraphs that are essentially identical to another’s published work and does not acknowledge or reference the material (Das & Panjabi, 2011). Second, plagiarism of ideas may occur when an author takes an idea from someone else and passes it off as his or her own. An ex-ample of this might be an idea “stolen ” from another professional pre