OSA identifies an act of plagiarism in a published document to be the substantial replication, without appropriate attribution, of significant elements of another document already published by the same or other authors. OSA has implemented a process for dealing with cases of plagiarism. When the Editor-in-Chief of a journal is notified of an instance of either of the two possible forms of plagiarism discussed above, he or she will make a preliminary investigation of the allegations, including a request for the accused authors to explain the situation. If further action is justified, then the Editor-in-Chief will refer the matter to the OSA Editorial Ethics Review Panel, who will investigate and take corrective action as appropriate. The Panel will consist of three members: the OSA Senior Director of Science Policy who will serve as Chair; the Chair of the Board of Editors who will serve as a member; and a third member with prior editorial experience and appointed by the Board of Editors. Penalties assessed to authors range from a simple warning to blocking access to a paper in the journal website, publishing notices describing the infraction and temporarily prohibiting the offending authors from publishing in OSA journals. In general, the penalty becomes more severe the more serious the infraction. Severity is judged by extent of the plagiarism (a few lines of text versus more extensive plagiarism of text, whether the infraction is a first offense, etc.) or the type of plagiarism. For example, self-plagiarism is considered less severe than plagiarism and plagiarism of text is considered less severe than plagiarism of ideas and results. Severe penalties, such as loss of OSA publishing privileges and blocking access to a paper in the journal website, require a unanimous vote of the Panel. An example of the notice that is inserted into the OSA electronic record in place of a blocked plagiarizing article is the following: