Self-Plagarism
- Thread starter cupcakelyfe
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Well then, either any professor I ever did this with is incompetent or that's a load of hooey. You can't plagarize what you own. Plagarism is the copying of another person's work, period.kris40k said:
If you look into the whitepaper I linked to, under section 3.0 "Definitions of Plagiarism", you'll find that your assertion of the definition of plagiarism is both correct and incorrect, depending upon either the Oxford-English Dictionary[footnote]http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/144939?redirectedFrom=plagiarism#eid[/footnote], or the Merriam-Webster Dictionary[footnote]http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiarized[/footnote].FalloutJack said:
It's not quite "period", as you so put it.
Now, the APA did not formalize rules about self-plagiarism until 2010, and not all academic institutions follow APA guidelines, so depending on your school and the year of your experiences, you could be quite right for that moment and place. However, when giving advice to people that could result in academic punishment if they follow it, we might want to be a bit more careful.
In any case, the original poster really should be asking this of their academic institution, not crowd-sourcing the Escapist.
At my Uni (college) self-plagiarism is a very real thing and they equate it to actual plagiarism.cupcakelyfe said:
Ask your course coordinator or a high level faculty member about your institution's policies here
This is also because almost everything in science is based on the solid foundation of previously known scientific findings. If you were to say things that could not be supported by several sources then you'd have to support that with experimental data, but that experiment would need a foundation in previous findings to actually hold up.davidmc1158 said:
This isn't really a problem though since you're supposed to include citations in text in any scientific paper and a detailed list of sources. If a software can find a source that is not listed which seems unrelated to the others then there's reason to question. That does sound like quite a lot of work though...
OT: Don't do it. You failed the class for being lazy with your papers. Take that as a lesson, don't take chances, do it right.
Hang on, they both say words to the effect of 'somebody else's'. I don't see the part where it says your own. It's not in there.kris40k said:
I think it's worth noting there are potentially 2 definitions of plagiarism.FalloutJack said:
One is the legsl, copyright definition - this is what matters in a court case about a copyright dispute. In that kind of situation you can't plagiarise yourself, because the only point the law cares about is ownership.
Plagiarism in this sense is claiming you own or created something that in fact you didn't.
You can't plagiarise yourself in this context, though technically you could I suppose if you created something but someone else owns the rights. (eg you had a dodgy publishing deal, or you contributed to a large project owned by a corporation)
The other form of plagiarism would seem to be academic plagiarism. Here it seems the issue is uniqueness. It's not so much about who created a work, as it is about how unique it is. In other words, is it something new, or is it a repeat of something else.
In this sense, you can plagiarise yourself, because it's no longer about who created something, but merely about what was created...
I just searched the other guy's links to Oxford and Webster's and found out his cited sources didn't have the thing in there he was trying to point to. Always points to copying someone else. As far as I can tell, the only real reason it would happen in this case was if the professor was a dick, of which there are a number of in the world.CrystalShadow said:
I'm sorry, but it's implying somebody else's. They all do. There is no indicator that it means your own.kris40k said:
I believe that any implication that you are inferring to that definition is of your own making. If as a mental exercise, you forget everything that you believe you know about plagiarism, and read the quote of the definition I posted, as it is written you will see that there is no requirement of ownership to be different.FalloutJack said:
In any case, I've already linked to the APA statement on self-plagiarism, which is clear, however the APA is a style guide and not used by all academic institutions. Here are a few sources from a couple respectable academic institutions:
[footnote]http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=icb.page355322[/footnote]
[footnote]http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/communitystandards/integrity/plagiarism-samples[/footnote]
Now, at best, you could say that self-plagiarism is a debated issue and not everyone agrees on it and that someone would be best referring the question to their specific academic institution. I would agree with that.
But a blanket statement that there is no such thing as self-plagiarism is false, and unhelpful to whomever you are giving that advice to. Anyone following it could easily find themselves in academic trouble depending on their institution and situation.
If I haven't convinced you of that fact by now, I'm not sure what other sources you may need.
It IS possible to plagiarize yourself, but that is not what you're suggesting.cupcakelyfe said:
If you had passed the original class and were using the assignments for a new, different class, then that would be "self plagiarism" - aka cheating by doubling up assignments.
However, since you want to use your old assignments for the SAME class, that you did not previously pass, then that's perfectly legal. You aren't cheating because it is literally the same assignment.
Now, that said, that is only MY take on it. As a teacher, if I was presented with this situation, that would be my call. However, your current professor may disagree. If you want to be safe, check with your professor.
I'm currently wrapping up a PhD having done two prior degrees so I have some familiarity with supervisors and/or tutors beating me over the head with plagiarism rules to keep me on the straight and narrow. Yes, it absolutely is plagiarism. Even if you write a new piece of work, if you use bits from a previous piece of work you've done you MUST reference yourself (in an academic setting that is).
You might be allowed to do it if you get permission, but I absolutely wouldn't take the risk of just submitting and hoping for the best. If you want to try you would be much better talking it over with whoever your supervisor is before doing so or you could get into a whole world of trouble.
You might be allowed to do it if you get permission, but I absolutely wouldn't take the risk of just submitting and hoping for the best. If you want to try you would be much better talking it over with whoever your supervisor is before doing so or you could get into a whole world of trouble.
Nonsense. What would be up for debate is whether it's real or bullshit. My vote is bullshit, that's all. It isn't what plagarism means.kris40k said:
That is not the view of my college's Responsible Conduct in Research Office.FalloutJack said:
Although I definitely agree with you that "self-plagarism" is bullshit, the official stance of the University I work for (and all the Universities we collaborate with) is that it is a real thing, and so I am forced to behave as if it is. Real life example from my own work - I've published a few papers about a genetic locus I've been mapping related to a certain disease. In the introduction section of my papers, I explain the disease phenotype, the symptoms, etc as background information. I have to write this section again from scratch each time, even though the phenotype hasn't changed and I already have a perfectly good description of it from the last paper I wrote that I could just copy and paste in. But if I did that, it would be "self-plagarism", and the University would land on me like a ton of bricks. So even though literally no one is harmed by me copy-pasting a small section from my own previous paper, I have to waste my time thinking of a new way to write the same thing, for reasons which have never been properly explained to me.
Well, part of the reason comes from your paper being published. If it should appear in more than one journal, then you fall into that wonderful zone of dealing with copyright law and who has the legal right to publish/print what. To avoid that legal nightmare, journals and publications hold a very high standard against publishing the same material more than once.rgrekejin said:That is not the view of my college's Responsible Conduct in Research Office.
Although I definitely agree with you that "self-plagarism" is bullshit, the official stance of the University I work for (and all the Universities we collaborate with) is that it is a real thing, and so I am forced to behave as if it is. Real life example from my own work - I've published a few papers about a genetic locus I've been mapping related to a certain disease. In the introduction section of my papers, I explain the disease phenotype, the symptoms, etc as background information. I have to write this section again from scratch each time, even though the phenotype hasn't changed and I already have a perfectly good description of it from the last paper I wrote that I could just copy and paste in. But if I did that, it would be "self-plagarism", and the University would land on me like a ton of bricks. So even though literally no one is harmed by me copy-pasting a small section from my own previous paper, I have to waste my time thinking of a new way to write the same thing, for reasons which have never been properly explained to me.
In the case of classes, the issue is that each paper is supposed to be new and original work. Re-submitting a paper is the very opposite of that. From the instructor's viewpoint, the reason is that each paper is meant to be an opportunity to learn something. If a paper gets recycled, then the student isn't learning anything more than how to avoid doing the work. And that's something I learned how to do long before I ever got to college.
While it may be annoying, it is not bullshit.
I'm changing my vote to 'bullshit AND college professors are incompetent'. They just don't make 'em like they use to.rgrekejin said: