From the Board of Editors: On plagiarism

Dear colleagues, there continues to be a disturbing number of duplicate submissions and plagiarism cases reported in all major journals, including the journals of The Optical Society. Duplicate submissions and plagiarism can take many forms, all of them are violations of professional ethics, the copyright agreement that an author signs along with submission of the paper, and the Guidelines of The Optical Society Concerning Ethical Practices in the Publication of Research. There must be a significant component of new science for a paper to be publishable. The copying of large segments of text from previously published or in-press papers with only minor cosmetic changes is not acceptable and can lead to the rejection of papers.