Habibzadeh F, Shashok K. Plagiarism in scientific writing: words or ideas? Croatian Medical Journal 2011;52(4):576-577
(doi: 10.3325/cmj.2011.52.576)
Plagiarism can be categorized in two general distinct categories – plagiarism of ideas and plagiarism of text. While in many fields like literature and humanities the author and hence the wordings are the most important aspect of the article, in scientific writing the scientific content is more important than the author and wordings. Here the originality is not in wordings, but in the scientific content. The author of a scientific paper should follow a well-established scientific methodology for conducting and reporting the results of a research. Should the damage to the integrity of a work associated with text plagiarism be considered less compared to the consequences of plagiarism of ideas?