The extent and causes of academic text recycling or ‘self-plagiarism’

Horbach, Serge P. J. M.; Halffman, Willem

doi:10.1016/j.respol.2017.09.004

Cited by 63 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Often viewed as a sub-category of plagiarism, self-plagiarism is also referred to as "duplicate", "dual", "overlapping", "prior", "repetitive", and "redundant" publication, along with "text recycling", "textual recycling", (Baggs, 2008;Kassirer & Angell, 1995;Langdon-Neuner, 2008;Roig, 2005Roig, , 2008. The terms "fragmented", "piecemeal" and "salami" publication are related terms referring to instances in which a data set is broken down into multiple components, with each published as a separate article (Hoit, 2007;Kassirer & Angell, 1995;Roig, 2005). While some have argued that plagiarism is a form of stealing from others, one cannot steal from oneself and so, the notion of self-plagiarism is an oxymoron.…”

Section: Definitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By the turn of the millennium, attitudes towards the LPU began to shift, with some scholars arguing that there may be cases where multiple articles from the same project could be acceptable (Baggs, 2008;Owen, 2004), although others still contend that it is better to avoid it (Hoit, 2007;Fonseca, 2013). We include this phrase in our definitions as we found it to be instructive in understanding the various permutations of self-plagiarism and how attitudes may have shifted over time.…”

Section: Definitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Self-plagiarism creates problems within the scientific publishing community because it can lead to an over-emphasis of findings, rising costs of journals, an excessive burden on reviewers, a skewing of the academic system which rewards scholars based on the number of articles they publish, an artificial inflation of journal impact, and an overall harm to the practices and reputation of scientific publishing (Fonseca, 2013;Hoit, 2007;Kassirer & Angell, 1995). The use of text-matching software was introduced to research publishing about a decade ago (Baggs, 2008), in part, to deter self-plagiarism in research publishing in order to avoid these problems, both for researchers and for the journals themselves.…”

Section: Statement Of the Problem And Research Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Editorial responses 16 Baserga, 2011;Chalmers, 2009;Joob & Wiwanitkit, 2013Keeble, 2016;Klosterman, 2013;Mohapatra & Samal, 2014;Teixeira da Silva, 2016;White, 2011;Wiwanitkit, 2012Wiwanitkit, , 2014Wiwanitkit, , 2015Zulqifar, 2007. Secondary research 12 Amos, 2014;Cheung & Driver, 2004;Elbeck, 2009;Errami et al 2007;Halupa, 2014;Horbach & Halffman, 2017;Ison, 2012Ison, , 2015Kokol et al 2016;Roig, 2005;Schein & Paladugu, 2001;Sun & Yang, 2015. Primary research 8 Bretag & Carapiet, 2007;Halupa & Bolliger, 2013Halupa, Breitenbach, & Anast, 2016;Jones, 2011;Mkhize et al, 2009;Roig & Ballew, 1994;Vincent Robinson, 2016.…”

Section: Analysis Of Typologies Of Evidenceunclassified

“…A more detailed analysis of studies using secondary data revealed that all were published over the past two decades, with more than half (58.3%) published between 2010 and 2017, indicating a general increase in the amount of research being done using secondary materials as a data source. & Driver, 2004;Elbeck, 2009;Errami et al 2007;Roig, 2005;Schein & Paladugu, 2001;7 58.3 Amos, 2014Halupa, 2014;Horbach & Halffman, 2017;Ison, 2012Ison, , 2015Kokol et al 2016;Sun & Yang, 2015;Total 12 100.0 Among the sources that examined secondary data, Halupa's (2014) paper was of particular interest to our study, as she examined self-plagiarism among students. She reported that neither faculty, nor students understand the concept of self-plagiarism very well, yet both groups view the issue differently.…”

Section: Sources Using Secondary Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Self-Plagiarism Research Literature in the Social Sciences: A Scoping Review

Eaton

Crossman

2018

Interchange

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Self-plagiarism is a contentious issue in higher education, research and scholarly publishing contexts. The practice is problematic because it disrupts scientific publishing by overemphasizing results, increasing journal publication costs, and artificially inflating journal impact, among other consequences. We hypothesized that there was a dearth of empirical studies on the topic of self-plagiarism, with an over-abundance of editorial and commentary articles based on anecdotal evidence. The research question was: What typologies of evidence characterize the literature on self-plagiarism in scholarly and research journals? We conducted a scoping review, using the search terms "self-plagiarism" and "self-plagiarism" (hyphenated), consulting five social sciences research databases, supplemented by a manual search for articles, resulting in over 5900 results. After removing duplicates and excluding non-scholarly sources, we arrived at a data set of 133 sources, with publication dates ranging from 1968 to 2017. With an interrater reliability of over 93% between two researchers, our typological analysis revealed 47 sources (34.3%) were editorials; 41 (29.9%) were conceptual research (including teaching cases); 16 (11.7%) were editorial responses; 12 (8.6%) were secondary research; and only 8 sources (5.8%) were primary research. There is little guidance in the available literature to graduate students or their professors about how to disentangle the complexities of self-plagiarism. With primary and secondary research combined accounting for 14.4% of overall contributions to the data set, and primary research constituting only 6% of overall contributions, we conclude with a call for more empirical evidence on the topic to support contributions to the scholarly dialogue.

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Section: Definitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Definitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Statement Of the Problem And Research Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Analysis Of Typologies Of Evidenceunclassified

Section: Sources Using Secondary Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Self-Plagiarism Research Literature in the Social Sciences: A Scoping Review

Eaton

Crossman

2018

Interchange

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Socially Responsible Research (SRR)

2024

Knowledge Production Modes Between Science and Applications 2

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Standardizing terminology for text recycling in research writing

Moskovitz

2021

Learned Publishing

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Because research in science, engineering and medical fields advances incrementally, researchers routinely write papers that build directly on their prior work. While each new research article is expected to make a novel contribution, researchers often need to repeat some material—method details, background and so on—from their previous articles, a practice called ‘text recycling’. While increasing awareness of text recycling has led to the proliferation of policies, journal editorials and scholarly articles addressing the practice, these documents tend to employ inconsistent terminology—using different terms to name the same key ideas and, even more problematic, using the same terms with different meanings. These inconsistencies make it difficult for readers to know precisely how the ideas or expectations articulated in one document relate to those of others. This paper first clarifies the problems with current terminology, showing how key terms are used inconsistently across publisher policies for authors, guidelines for editors and textbooks on research ethics. It then offers a new taxonomy of text‐recycling practices with terms designed to align with the acceptability of these practices in common research writing and publishing contexts.

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The extent and causes of academic text recycling or ‘self-plagiarism’

Cited by 63 publications

References 42 publications

Self-Plagiarism Research Literature in the Social Sciences: A Scoping Review

Self-Plagiarism Research Literature in the Social Sciences: A Scoping Review

Socially Responsible Research (SRR)

Standardizing terminology for text recycling in research writing

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