Plagiarism: a joint statement from the Singapore Medical Journal and the Medical Journal of Malaysia.

Med J Malaysia Vol 63 No 5 December 2008 Both the Singapore Medical Journal (SMJ) and the Medical Journal of Malaysia (MJM), have recently encountered a number of submissions of plagiarised work to our respective journals. This utterly dishonest practice is universally deplored by editors of all medical and scientific journals. As it is imperative that journal readers should be able to trust that what they are reading is original, we feel very strongly that punitive measures should be applied to authors found guilty of plagiarism, in order to discourage this undesirable practice. The academic career of an author found guilty of plagiarism may potentially be destroyed, in addition to reduction in the credibility of the plagiarist’s co-authors, his or her professional colleagues, department and institution.