10 Plagiarism means
representing someone else’s work and ideas as one’s own. Plagiarism is
prohibited. Disciplinary action will be taken against any members of the WHO
workforce who reproduce others’ work as their own, including in external
publications.
20 The development of the content of publications issued by the Organization typically involves a number of people and institutions. Each publication should therefore acknowledge all those who have made a substantial technical contribution and of their specific roles in an Acknowledgements section (see section VIII.2.1, paragraphs 40 to 100).
30 When work is developed by a
consultant or other individual who is not a WHO staff member under a contract
that vests ownership of the work in WHO, the WHO staff member issuing the
contract may not claim the work as his or her own. If this work is published as
an external publication, subject to clearance, these individuals should be acknowledged
in accordance with the International Committee of Medical Journal
Editors (ICMJE) recommendations on attribution of authorship and
contributorship. WHO has no obligation
to acknowledge the work of the consultant in a WHO publication, however, for
the sake of transparency, an acknowledgement of the consultant’s role should be
considered.
40 When information from published materials is
quoted or referred to in a publication, those materials should be appropriately
cited and a bibliographical reference included in the reference list.
Permission is required to reproduce or adapt materials belonging to third
parties (see section VIII.6.4). The responsible technical officer should make
every effort to ensure that the publications they develop are correctly
referenced and that permissions have been obtained. External publishers
routinely screen manuscripts for instances of plagiarism or the use of artificial
intelligence (AI).
