As a student anyway. Self plagiarism is a controversial topic in other circumstances. Many academics feel that if they described some element of an experiment some way it’s because that’s the best way they could imagine. If they do the experiment in some other way, or write up something for other publications or whatever it would be absurd to not take their own sentences if they want.
Many academics do not believe that this is necessary. Maybe the experiment example is a bad one, since it would make sense to cite a related experiment. Perhaps writing a pop science article that uses a paragraph from a paper they wrote is a better example.
But I think my example would not be acceptable for a student. You may not re-use a paragraph you wrote, even if you cite it. Double submission is often treated similarly to plagiarism.
My main point is that what is and isn’t plagiarism is contested, outside of high school and undergraduate students.
> But I think my example would not be acceptable for a student. You may not re-use a paragraph you wrote, even if you cite it. Double submission is often treated similarly to plagiarism.
Why not? That's the part I (top level commenter) have never understood.
Why am I limited to having or expressing my ideas in one venue only, and only once? Why don't I have unlimited right to use my own thoughts as often as I care to?
Assume you write a bachelor thesis on topic X. Then, move universities (or professors, whatever), and write more or less the same thesis again to get a masters degree.
The problem with that is that it’s academic dishonesty. You’re turning in work for academic credit that you didn’t do. Transfer the self-plagiarism situation to another context, say you self-publish a book and re-use some material from another book you wrote. The fact of self-plagiarism may still exist but in this new context it’s not clear that the harm does (whereas copying another writer’s words is still clearly harmful.)
If I turn in the same project for two different courses without flagging it, that's considered a violation of many academic (teaching) integrity codes. Similarly if you hire me to write a bespoke piece of software (with copyright assigned to you) and I re-use code I've delivered to other clients, that could be considered a damaging violation of our contract. You could refer to both of these cases as "self-plagiarism", but that's just a phrase: the actual harm caused by it is very specific to the context it occurs in. (And any punishments/opprobrium we assign to it should be similarly context-dependent.)
There's a difference between a school writing up its own set of conduct rules and plagiarism.
Any two entities can agree to any set of terms they want. If a school says you have to sign a code of conduct to go there, and it prohibits submitting the same work for more than one course, fine. If someone breaks that rule, accuse them of violating the code of conduct.
But that's not plagiarism. "Self-plagiarism" is a contradiction in terms.
I don't like the term either, and what I'm trying to say is that whereas "plagiarism" is always (to some extent) a bad thing - since we should not steal others' work without credit - "self-plagiarism" is only problematic in specific contexts. It would be better not to use such a loaded term.
It's also important to understand that many of the lessons we are taught in school about attribution are deliberately over-emphasized by instructors, in order to impart good citation habits. If frightening students to death about "self-plagiarism" causes them to be unnecessarily forthright in citing their own work, even outside the classroom context, instructors are mostly fine with that.
Let's phrase it differently: how many times do you think one should be allowed to turn in the same piece of work for additional academic credit?
The issue with self plagiarism isn't that you are quoting your own previous work (you are free to do that), it's because you're not tagging it as a citation and thereby passing it off as new.
> how many times do you think one should be allowed to turn in the same piece of work for additional academic credit?
As many as it meets the requirements for.
Heck, I submitted the exact same "tell us about a significant experience in your life" story to every single university I applied for.
And I guarantee the teachers are duplicating lessons or parts of lessons when they teach related classes. Have you ever seen a professor cite, "Me, the first time I taught this class"?
That's just being smart and efficient. I see absolutely nothing wrong with any of these examples.
The avoidance of self-plagiarism isn't some kind of honour code for all aspects of life - it only applies to the specific case of a paper to submit for academic credit. The examples you describe have nothing to do with that, of course.
>As many as it meets the requirements for.
What I'm trying to tell you is that it normally won't meet the requirements a second time. It's usually part of the university's examination regulations that a paper has to be original. Everything else is seen as an attempt of scientific deception that consequently can and will be treated as a violation of regulations.
But I have to admit I'm not sure if that's a universal rule, or just where I'm from. I suspect we might be having some kind of cultural divide at play here. May I ask what part of the world you're in?
Scientific deception? It was a philosophy paper (in my original post). There weren't any scientific claims. I just made a statement in one paper that I had previously made about the same topic in a different paper.
If I had taken two classes that both requested an essay on the symbolism of Plato's cave, I'd be stoked I already had one at the ready. Wouldn't even occur to me that there was some problem with it. But even that isn't what happened in my original post that prompted the question.
I'm in the U.S., and I was pursuing my degree at a university people have heard of in New England (but not the one that probably first comes to mind, especially about this topic lately).
Thank you for the clarification. I suppose that explains it - as an engineer, I was naturally thinking of a pretty different kind of paper. I guess the same standards don't make sense for every field.
I'll grant your definition of plagiarism. Now, under this definition (which differs from what any layman would think of "plagiarism" as) explain why plagiarism is bad. Who exactly is harmed when I repeat my own words?
Whose definition is this "newness"? Plagiarism is about passing other people's work off as your own. It comes from a Greek root about kidnapping, not about how old something is.
Your observation about the root of the word might be accurate, but (in my personal view unfortunately) is not relevant. "Plagiarism" is now used to describe previously published (and in some cases unpublished!) work that is being "recycled", regardless of author, without explicitly noting it to be such.
I'm not defending the usage, I'm simply explaining how the term is now used. Language mutates, origins are lost, and usage evolves.
You may choose to quote dictionary definitions, but dictionaries document usage, and of necessity can never be fully up-to-date with more recent changes. This is especially true when the terms are being interpreted within a specific context. In many academic environments "self-plagiarism" is an adaptation of the original concept to indicate that students cannot repeatedly submit the same work over and over again. They will say something like "Work for this accreditation must be new and original" and then use the term "self-plagiarism" to describe when that stipulation is breached.
As I say, language evolves. People even say "The proof is in the pudding" and "I could care less". These are idioms that convey meaning as an entirety and are not to be interpreted according to the meaning of the words therein.
Similarly, now in some contexts "self-plagiarism" is a term used to describe recycling one's own work. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's not.
Love it, like it, or loathe it, the term exists and describes "A Thing(tm)".
This is why I'm asking whose definition it is. Whose idea was it to start using this term, which had a useful and important definition for generations, to refer to something else now, and then act as though everyone should just know this?
I'd assume it would have had to be somebody pretty important, for their fiat to have such weight. I'd like to know who it was.
I'm sure you can use on-line search tools to find where and when the term first appeared on the internet. My suspicion is that the phenomenon was being discussed informally between people who assess students' work, someone used the term "plagiarism", someone will have pointed out that it was "plagiarising" the student's own work, so the prefix was added, and stuck.
It's a concept that needs a name, and when a name turns up it often spreads quickly with no obvious source.
That includes citing your work that is unpublished (there are valid ways to cite unpublished work), and building on it which would be fine in many cases.
When did newness become part of the definition? It's not on the etymological history of the word. It's not in dictionary definitions of the word. Where is this coming from?
