Self-Plagiarism

Self-plagiarism. Ridiculous, right? How could someone plagiarize themselves? Not so fast. Plagiarism is defined as “the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own” (Thanks, Google). Is it really wrong to take one’s own work and pass it off as their own, when the work was actually theirs to start with? The answer turns out to be more complicated and more fascinating than someone would think.

As it turns out, people have conflicting ideas about this. “While [self-plagiarism] doesn’t cross the line of true theft of others’ ideas, it nonetheless can create issues in the scholarly publishing world,” reports Ben Mudrak at aje.com, “Beyond [word for word] sections of text, self-plagiarism can also refer to the publication of identical papers in two places.” 

“Publishing the same material several times can violate copyright agreements and journal editorial policies, and it is unlikely to be appreciated by academic colleagues.” Aleksi Aaltonen writes in a post on medium.com. “But these should not be confused with plagiarism that undermines the way academic knowledge production is motivated.”

Both of these websites agree that self-plagiarism is a thing, and that it could possibly lead to copyright violations and issues in the “scholarly publishing world.” So, is this it? Is the argument over? Turns out, the answer is no.

“The definition of plagiarism makes it quite simple … copying from ourselves is not plagiarism. We are not using ‘someone else's’ work, we are using our own,” states Jeff Offutt on Wiley Online Library. “There could be a copyright problem, depending on who owns the copyright for the paper. But that's very different from plagiarism and not usually something reviewers should be concerned with.”

This shines a whole different light on things. If plagiarism is defined as taking someone else’s work, is it plagiarism if one takes their own work? We are back where we started. 

In conclusion, there is no right or wrong answer for self plagiarism. It is a matter of opinion. Although taking someone else’s work as your own is illegal, reusing your own work should not be.