Submitting the same work, in whole or in part, to be considered by more than one journal at the same time—a practice known as dual submission—is a breach of professional and publishing ethics. Another serious ethical violation is plagiarism—namely, the use of the printed words of another individual or from another publication without giving the source appropriate credit.

When dual submission or plagiarism is deemed to have occurred, after affording the author(s) due process, the involved journals typically apply sanctions to the author(s). In both instances these sanctions may prohibit an author or authors from submitting to the journal for a specified period of time. The article at issue may also be removed from the publication or a notice of the violation posted for readers in the journal.

Unfortunately, sanctioned authors may simply submit their articles to alternative journals in our discipline during the period of sanctioning. This circumvents and undermines the deterrent effect of the potential sanction, and thus the penalty has limited strength.

The editors of the major journals that publish articles in the field of oral, maxillofacial, and craniomaxillofacial surgery have agreed to work together to try to strengthen the way we address the problem of dual submission and plagiarism. We have agreed that when any of the five journals (JOMS, BJOMS, IJOMS, JCMFS, OOOO) determines that an author or authors have been found guilty of dual submission and/or plagiarism, all five journals will implement sanctions based on their individual policies and practices. This may mean that a sanctioned author may not submit an article to any of the five journals for several years. In this way we hope that authors will take great care to avoid dual submissions or plagiarism.