Publishing is a privilege, not a right. The vast majority of Open Access journals, such as PloS, Frontiers, BioMed Central, etc., charge authors several thousand dollars for this privilege. Part of the publisher’s service to the author (and ultimately readers) involves a plagiarism check, the cost of which is readily borne by the substantial Open Access fees paid by authors. Alternatively, authors are afforded a similar service when they surrender their copyright to subscription journals.

In Cureus’ free publication model plagiarism, and the cost of checking for plagiarism, represents a bigger challenge. Each and every article we publish must be checked for plagiarism. When we discover that content has been taken from other sources without proper attribution, the article is blocked and the academic department leadership of the offending institution is notified. This process costs our journal meaningful time and money.

Because plagiarism undermines Cureus’ philosophy of providing free Open Access publishing, we want to do everything in our power to deter and prevent plagiarists from submitting to Cureus. This is no easy task, but we believe it’s worth it. How might we do this? One idea is the use of old-fashioned public shaming. Perhaps if the offending authors are suitably exposed, these “authors” and/or institutions will clean up their act. After all, we at Cureus know who the plagiarists are and where they’re located. The question I would now like to pose to the community of Cureus users is, how far do you think we should go? Should we list plagiarists by name on a digital “Wall of Shame”?

While most of the institutions where plagiarists were situated have taken their responsibilities seriously when confronted, one such institution, located in Srinagar, India, recently refused to acknowledge the seriousness of their offense; what type of ethics is such an institution teaching its students and residents?. Regardless, in a first step to put a spotlight on plagiarists, the following world map illustrates the location of authors who have submitted articles with plagiarized content to Cureus in the past 2 years. We want to protect the integrity of our responsible authors, and you can help. I urge you, our Cureus users to sound off on this topic of concern for all of us!