Is It Early to Talk About Unethical Publication Practices?

As modern medical and health sciences education in Ethiopia has not more than half a century publication in the field was limited. However, in recent years due to relative increment in health workforce and number of journals to publish on, the number of publications both on international and local journals are increasing alarmingly. In line with this, unethical publication practicesauthorship problems, duplicate publications, salami publications, snatching others’ work,plagiarism, scientific fraud and publication with no new information are becoming concerns.In the past few years we witnessed some of the above unethical publication practices committed not only on our journals but also on international journals by our academicians. It is not too early though not late to raise the issue so that researchers can abide to the international ethical standards.Since the problem is global in nature, it is not easy to investigate and tackle. Taking preventive measures at every level of publication process is crucial. Authors, journal editors and peer reviewersshould stand on the frontline to craft ethical publication practices in the country. Readers as well have responsibility of exposing unethical publication practices whenever they come across with.In the 2 nd World Conference on Research Integrity in Singapore in 2010, international standards for responsible research publication for editors and authors were developed with the help of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). As the statements are posted on COPE website, http://publicationethics.org/resources/international-standards, I request all the Ethiopian Journal of Health Science attendants to read the documents to cultivate good publication practices.