APA is seriously concerned about the integrity of our literature and has included an expanded section on publication in the 1992 revision of the APA Ethical Guidelines, which took effect December 1, 1992. That section is reprinted on the reverse side of this letter. We can prevent problems before they occur in two major areas addressed in these guidelines. Authors should cite the sources of their ideas and methods as well as put quotation marks around phrases taken from another source. The change or reordering of a few words in a sentence does not relieve authors of the obligation to quote and recognize appropriately the source of their material.
Duplicate publication involves publishing the same data more than once.
Duplicate or fragmented publications are misleading if they appear to represent independent observations. They can distort the scientific literature, especially in reviews or meta-analyses. On occasion it may be appropriate to publish several reports referring to the same data base. The author should inform the editor at the time of submission about all previously published or submitted reports so the editor can judge if the article represents a new contribution. Sometimes authors want to publish essentially the same material in different journals in order to reach different audiences.