It's a bit ridiculous, but an expectation in academia today. So to avoid any honor code violations (and academic suicide), you have to cite your own stuff.


There's a bigger conversation to be had about intellectual rights, citations, and academics, and rethinking ownership of thoughts...

The issue with it is that most Universities have an honor system in place, and the use of reusing old material from another paper is seen as a form of deception. Obviously, it's more designed for punishing people who use paper mills for their papers (Kid in my Asian Art History class apparently did this. Bad move.) but can encompass people reusing their own work.

If I were to have submitted the original paper for last terms class to my current teacher, I would likely fail and get put on some kind of academic probation.

It's mostly to make sure that students don't write one paper and then submit it for multiple classes. But it also serves the function of allowing you to skip a lot of the normal justification for the statement.

Plagiarism is as much about explaining where the information came from as it is about giving credit where credit is due. I wrote a paper last week about accent acquisition in adults, and it was a lot shorter because I could just cite materials without having to support the quotes myself. Somebody who takes issue with it can go back to the original materials for a much more in depth discussion.

Historians are known for citing everything they possibly can to the point of specifically looking for people who said something similar so that they don't have to take credit for anything. It's probably more common in history since they aren't trying to invent anything, but as accurately as possible describe past events.

TL;DR: Citations are your friend, why take the blame for somebody elses mistakes when you can pin it on them with a citation?

If there citations then there not your work... hence its not plagiarism.. if you used a single sentence that you wrote from your old work the school could say you plagiarized a paper that was turned in. it matters not if its your own.

It's a reasonable moral question, though - how far should you go? I had a classmate for one of my classes that was in her sixth year of a biology degree, and had written a paper her second year on a certain disease. She added powerpoints to accompany it for a second class. She continued submitting it for every paper or presentation requirement, wheedling her teachers into accepting something different from her assignment by telling them how interested she was in the topic. She said she had only written the one paper in four or five years of a bio degree. That is, in my opinion, considerably past where you draw the line. And God help us all, she was studying to be a nurse.

That is really pretty bad. Especially because she was becoming a nurse. Maybe if she was going to go into academia or research in that specific topic, and she was actually really interested in just that one topic it would make sense for her to focus all of her research on it, since that is what she wanted to do/solve/discover. But as a nurse you should know lots about many things, not tons about one thing.

Wtf, how can you plagiarize yourself? This sounds like some made up, BS term, to keep students from recycling work. Because, you know, there are actual dictionary definitions of plagiarism and every one of them has this essential element in them: "another author". You answered your own question anyway. You're talking about a different element of the same subject. That's really the end of it.

Ye Olde Favorite Wikipedia on self-plagiarism.

However it is actually a problem, though it can be argued to be a mostly ethical problem (but is not plagiarism in general an ethical question?). There have been cases where the same article have been published in different journals without recognition, and where researchers have just recycled same material with new headings - both of these are big no no 's.

When it comes to student work, there are three reasons to cite your own work:

1 - Ethical, is it just not right to be open with where you have the information from? even though the source is yourself? Also all "facts" or "information" in academia needs to be evidenced, in this case the evidence comes from your own previous work and it therefore needs to be cited so it can be check by fellow academics.

2- Habitual, just get into the habit to alway cite whenever you are using a source, no matter which source it is. This is a good habit that might save your own back someday.

3- Technical, many unis today are checking student work electronically. A computer will not now that the essay you handed in last year is actually your own, it only check to see how this new piece of work compares with previous submitted work. However have you cited yourself it flags out as a citation straight away.

As amcdermo said in the previous page it isn't so much "self plagiarism", though I think this is the correct definition, as proving that you already know what you wrote and that you aren't just copying things you said again. It is lazy if you take something you already wrote and pretend it is a new thing. It doesn't mean it is necessarily morally dishonest, but it is a good way to be discredited in academia.

A lot of people pay to put their articles in those journals, so I'd say, knock yourself out. You can cite your original sources just fine, neither is a lie.

I really do take issue with the term. Recycling fraud (according to wikipedia, the alternate term) is much more appropriate, though it's certainly not fraud if you don't represent it as something that it's not.

Please do X, okay Prof. here is X, it is my own work.

Apparently even on Wikipedia, they note that many people think the whole concept is BS and really is an issue in one particular field. No dictionary includes it as a term, nor do they include any definition of plagiarism that can be applied to one's own work. It's an oxymoron that addresses a non-problem in most of academia it seems (if you're not publishing for tenure, I can honestly say, no one gives a rat's ass).