Writing up your own work
Topic: Citing your own work
When writing a new piece, how do you use your previous publications without self-plagiarising?
This topic is designed to help you improve:
- your understanding of the differences between, and different perspectives on, self-citation and self-plagiarism
- your skills in reviewing and improving your approach to writing for publication, in line with publishing conventions in your discipline
In this topic two academics share their approaches to linking their publications.
Further reading on this topic:
Colberg, C., & Kobourov, S. (2005). Self-plagiarism in computer science. Communications of the ACM, 48(4), 88–94.
Of relevance to most fields of study, not only computer science. Defines various types of reuse of work that might be considered as self-plagiarism – textual, semantic, blatant, selective, incidental, cryptomnesiac, opaque, advocacy. Includes literature, policies and reuse data from a study of 50 academic departments, and ten academics’ views on the subject, and raises questions for wider scholarly debate.
Green, L. (2005). Reviewing the scourge of self-plagiarism. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 8(5). Retrieved June 1, 2006 from http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/07-green.php
Suggests that this has only recently become an “evil”, gives perspectives on its legitimacy, discusses the development of the SPlaT tool for identifying it, and outlines its repercussions for peer reviewers and journal and book editors.
Hyland, K. (2003). Self-citation and self-reference: Credibility and promotion in academic publication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(3), 251-259.
Explores "how writers actually used self-citation and self-mention in 240 research articles and 800 article abstracts in eight disciplines."(p.251)
Overview | Publishing your work | Citing your own work
Co-authoring | Writing up research into teaching