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As for the class, if it's factual information, you would simply reuse the information and the same citations. This is common -- authors who regularly write on subjects typically end up coming back to historical or factual things that simply can't or don't change, so they'll just lift the factual element out of a previous work and use the same citations. For those citing themselves, or discussing a recurring subject, they will often state "As I wrote about earlier, blah blah blah" and then either cite themselves (if published) or include the same footnotes/citations as the previous work.
Referring to the author or the paper will usually cost you points at the college level. "I" and "this paper" and shit are inappropriate.
I work in academic publishing; it's entirely related to the type of subject matter. If you're presenting your idea, you use "I" or "My." If a paper does not have a proper abstract, it is common for an introductory paragraph or section to substitute as such, in which case referring to the work you're writing is also common. Again, it depends on the subject matter. There is no "rule" against it, although I will agree that many freshmen utilize lazy writing (in which case using first person as well as "this paper" is used incorrectly). The OP didn't specify if this paper was historical research or historical analysis, but believe me, if you're tasked with writing a paper and it includes "Analyze [subject] and discuss any strengths or shortcomings you find," you better believe the paper is going to include "I." Otherwise, you're stating as fact what is your opinion -- which will usually cost you points at the college level.
Not if you know how to write papers you're not. You can state opinions without saying "I think that blahblahblah". Very easily.
Do you have a source for that quoted definition of plagiarism? In a couple cases musical artists have been successfully sued by record labels for plagiarizing their own work, because the work was owned by a different label. That is the argument that VC is making here. You no longer have free access to that work as independently generated material because it was previously used in another aspect.
Please remember, this is for a college class, to be turned in for a grade from a professor that you have already identified:
Your goal needs to be, "What course of action will get me the best grade and carry minimal repercussion, preferably none?" As opposed to "can I convince this teacher that my work is not plagiarism?". He probably won't listen.
The cunt comment was to giving us another term paper we weren't aware of; his grading is lenient.
Also, "self-plagiarism" might possibly be the most bullshit term I've heard ever.
I agree, "self-plagiarism" does sound like a trumped up term. I found it on the academic code webpage of the University of Calgary from a Google search, which means someone in an academic setting was punished for exactly that behavior. If it's your professor using some weird phrase for academic dishonesty instead of me, some random dude on the internet, it's a lot harder to challenge his assertion of your wrong doing, no matter what he chooses to call it. Saying he's wrong because his use of the word "plagiarism" doesn't match the textbook definition isn't likely to help.
It sounds like you have a good handle on what this professor is like and what he would tolerate. You've probably already handed the assignment in, but it wouldn't hurt to ask him directly for future reference. Getting to know your professor's style better is always a good thing.
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I agree, "self-plagiarism" does sound like a trumped up term. I found it on the academic code webpage of the University of Calgary from a Google search, which means someone in an academic setting was punished for exactly that behavior. If it's your professor using some weird phrase for academic dishonesty instead of me, some random dude on the internet, it's a lot harder to challenge his assertion of your wrong doing, no matter what he chooses to call it. Saying he's wrong because his use of the word "plagiarism" doesn't match the textbook definition isn't likely to help.
It sounds like you have a good handle on what this professor is like and what he would tolerate. You've probably already handed the assignment in, but it wouldn't hurt to ask him directly for future reference. Getting to know your professor's style better is always a good thing.
Thought this was interesting, Irving Hexham wrote that http://www.ucalgary.ca/~hexham/study/plag.html he is actually my prof in an intro religious studies course I'm taking. It's not that anyone got in any trouble for it, he just has this pretty well written guide on plagiarism (which some colleges/unis use).
He says self-plagiarism isn't a very good term and in most cases should actually be something along the lines of recycling fraud.
Extra little rant:
He's somewhat of an annoying prof. It's an intro religious studies course, supposed to be based around concepts of religion, things like common things between religions, differences, foundations of religion. Instead it always seems like he's trying to convert us to Christianity. Every time he mentions Jesus or some Christian teaching you can hear it in his voice, though I can't blame him for that.
The thing that gets me is whenever some important atheist philosopher is discussed he always brings up a point about them being anti-semitic, I don't think he's ever said anything bad about the Christian figures we've talked about. Also we have two required texts to buy and read....
1. The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to Christianity... This is just buhhh, really not very relevant to the course I think, and yes I did read it all already.
2. The Christian Travelers Guide to Great Britain written by none other than Irving Hexham (my prof). It's basically a big list of Christian things to go see in Britain but it has to be read because we have to write about some places and aren't allowed outside sources, so stupid.
/rant
Here's the bit on self-plagiarism, can be found in the above link:
3.7. So-called "self-plagiarism" and recycling fraud:
Legally it is impossible under American law to steal from oneself. Therefore, because plagiarism is defined as theft some people argue that self-plagiarism is impossible by definition. This is because people cannot steal from their own work. There are, however,circumstances such as insurance fraud when people defraud others by claiming that something they owned was stolen when it was not.
On the Internet Humanist Forum, professor Paul Brian of the University of Montreal argued that "self-plagiarism," or the recycling of an old work in a new guise, "is also a theft since the author leads the book-buyer to think that there is a new book of his on the market. The author is misleading his/her readers: to me, it is just the same thing as to sell a secondhand car while claiming it's a brand new one" (The Humanist Forum 7/13, 16 April 1992). Perhaps a better analogy is the used car dealer who changes a car's odometer to make it appear much less used than it really is. Such a practice is recognized to be illegal. So too "self-plagiarism" is fraud if not outright theaft (Brogan 1992:453-465). To avoid confusion here perhaps it is better to drop the term "self-plagiarism" and simply call it recycling fraud.
Recycling fraud must be carefully distinguished from the legitimate recycling of a writer's own work that to a greater or lesser extent everyone does. Although recycling fraud in academic publications is a gray area many universities implicitly recognize the practice as fraudulent by publishing rules preventing students from submitting essentially the same essay for credit in different courses. There are also rules against someone submitting the same graduate thesis to different universities. Among established academics self-plagiarism is a problem when essentially the same article or book is submitted on more than one occasion to gain additional salary increments or for purpose of promotion.
Like plagiarism the essence of recycling fraud is the author's attempt to deceive the reader. This happens when no indication is given that the work is being recycled and an effort is made to disguise the original text. The issue is one of the extent of the deception. Disguising a text occurs when an author makes cosmetic changes that cause the same article, chapter, or book to look significantly different when in reality it actually remains unchanged in most of its wording and its central argument. Changing such things as paragraph breaks, capitalization, or the substitution of technical terms using different languages that leads readers to believe they are reading something completely new is recycling fraud when such changes are the only ones an author makes to a text.
The extent of recycling is also an indication of recycling fraud. Academics normally republish revised versions of their Ph.D. thesis. They also often develop different aspects of an argument in several papers that require the repetition of key passages from an original work. This is not recycling fraud if the work develops new insights. It is recycling fraud if the argument, examples, evidence, and conclusions remain the same without the development of new ideas or presentation of additional evidence. In other words it is recycling fraud when two works only differ in their appearance but are presented as separate and distinct works.
Despite the focus on on the "published author", that description seems pretty fair and would put most college students in my position in the clear judging from the last paragraph.
I actually think that this is something that schools need to address more specifically - I totally agree with the spoilered quote in terms of trying to re-publish a paper multiple times, but in my mind (and this is in opposition to most school policies, so don't use this as an excuse) if you're asked to write a paper for a class on the same topic that you've already written, I don't see why it's so wrong to copy what you've said before for another paper. I see it as a difference of the goal - if you're republishing the same paper multiple times, you're trying to fraudulently increase your citation count, whereas if you're copying a small section you already thought about and wrote in another school paper you're just saving 30 minutes of busy-work paraphrasing it enough so that it technically doesn't copy the previous one.
It becomes almost a semantic argument - you could go to one extreme and argue that it's unfair to write a paper on topic A because you already wrote a related paper on topic A in another class, and so you have an unfairly less amount of research that you have to do... and that's at least somewhat true, but if the professors don't let you choose to do a new paper and force you to make an identical argument to one you've already made, then they're just asking you to regurgitate the identical paragraph anyway.
but this is all just a school-work kind of argument, in the real world it's something you shouldn't be doing anyway, so you might as well get used to rewording the same paragraph 8 different times
3.7. So-called "self-plagiarism" and recycling fraud:
Legally it is impossible under American law to steal from oneself. Therefore, because plagiarism is defined as theft some people argue that self-plagiarism is impossible by definition. This is because people cannot steal from their own work. There are, however,circumstances such as insurance fraud when people defraud others by claiming that something they owned was stolen when it was not.
On the Internet Humanist Forum, professor Paul Brian of the University of Montreal argued that "self-plagiarism," or the recycling of an old work in a new guise, "is also a theft since the author leads the book-buyer to think that there is a new book of his on the market. The author is misleading his/her readers: to me, it is just the same thing as to sell a secondhand car while claiming it's a brand new one" (The Humanist Forum 7/13, 16 April 1992). Perhaps a better analogy is the used car dealer who changes a car's odometer to make it appear much less used than it really is. Such a practice is recognized to be illegal. So too "self-plagiarism" is fraud if not outright theaft (Brogan 1992:453-465). To avoid confusion here perhaps it is better to drop the term "self-plagiarism" and simply call it recycling fraud.
Recycling fraud must be carefully distinguished from the legitimate recycling of a writer's own work that to a greater or lesser extent everyone does. Although recycling fraud in academic publications is a gray area many universities implicitly recognize the practice as fraudulent by publishing rules preventing students from submitting essentially the same essay for credit in different courses. There are also rules against someone submitting the same graduate thesis to different universities. Among established academics self-plagiarism is a problem when essentially the same article or book is submitted on more than one occasion to gain additional salary increments or for purpose of promotion.
Like plagiarism the essence of recycling fraud is the author's attempt to deceive the reader. This happens when no indication is given that the work is being recycled and an effort is made to disguise the original text. The issue is one of the extent of the deception. Disguising a text occurs when an author makes cosmetic changes that cause the same article, chapter, or book to look significantly different when in reality it actually remains unchanged in most of its wording and its central argument. Changing such things as paragraph breaks, capitalization, or the substitution of technical terms using different languages that leads readers to believe they are reading something completely new is recycling fraud when such changes are the only ones an author makes to a text.
The extent of recycling is also an indication of recycling fraud. Academics normally republish revised versions of their Ph.D. thesis. They also often develop different aspects of an argument in several papers that require the repetition of key passages from an original work. This is not recycling fraud if the work develops new insights. It is recycling fraud if the argument, examples, evidence, and conclusions remain the same without the development of new ideas or presentation of additional evidence. In other words it is recycling fraud when two works only differ in their appearance but are presented as separate and distinct works.
Just cite yourself. In MLA it is perfectly fine to use previous work as long as you cite it - you see it all the time in academic journals and literary reviews.
I mean, at this point, it would be pretty ridiculous if I couldn't cite myself on Langston Hughes considering the amount of research I've put into him or the research I've done on the bible.
I think they consider it academic dishonesty if you try to pass it off as new and fresh ideas, when in a previous work you have talked about it in length. That would be plagiarism and is something I would avoid, again, through citing yourself.
As for the class, if it's factual information, you would simply reuse the information and the same citations. This is common -- authors who regularly write on subjects typically end up coming back to historical or factual things that simply can't or don't change, so they'll just lift the factual element out of a previous work and use the same citations. For those citing themselves, or discussing a recurring subject, they will often state "As I wrote about earlier, blah blah blah" and then either cite themselves (if published) or include the same footnotes/citations as the previous work.
Referring to the author or the paper will usually cost you points at the college level. "I" and "this paper" and shit are inappropriate.
Depends on the subject of the paper, though, doesn't it? I generally try to avoid it myself for stylistic reasons (which can lead to some interesting moments), but if you are writing an expository essay, or perhaps a criticism rather than a research paper, or a comparative textual analysis or something, then it may be appropriate.
Also, with regards to citing yourself: don't do it. Seriously, I know you may be crunched for time and you already did very similar work or whatever, but unless you are a big name with lots of published research (Like Chomsky, who cites himself all the time), it's really bad form to cite yourself. It may not even be necessarily against the policies of your particular university, but it just looks bad and lazy.
Posts
Not if you know how to write papers you're not. You can state opinions without saying "I think that blahblahblah". Very easily.
I agree, "self-plagiarism" does sound like a trumped up term. I found it on the academic code webpage of the University of Calgary from a Google search, which means someone in an academic setting was punished for exactly that behavior. If it's your professor using some weird phrase for academic dishonesty instead of me, some random dude on the internet, it's a lot harder to challenge his assertion of your wrong doing, no matter what he chooses to call it. Saying he's wrong because his use of the word "plagiarism" doesn't match the textbook definition isn't likely to help.
It sounds like you have a good handle on what this professor is like and what he would tolerate. You've probably already handed the assignment in, but it wouldn't hurt to ask him directly for future reference. Getting to know your professor's style better is always a good thing.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
Thought this was interesting, Irving Hexham wrote that http://www.ucalgary.ca/~hexham/study/plag.html he is actually my prof in an intro religious studies course I'm taking. It's not that anyone got in any trouble for it, he just has this pretty well written guide on plagiarism (which some colleges/unis use).
He says self-plagiarism isn't a very good term and in most cases should actually be something along the lines of recycling fraud.
Extra little rant:
He's somewhat of an annoying prof. It's an intro religious studies course, supposed to be based around concepts of religion, things like common things between religions, differences, foundations of religion. Instead it always seems like he's trying to convert us to Christianity. Every time he mentions Jesus or some Christian teaching you can hear it in his voice, though I can't blame him for that.
The thing that gets me is whenever some important atheist philosopher is discussed he always brings up a point about them being anti-semitic, I don't think he's ever said anything bad about the Christian figures we've talked about. Also we have two required texts to buy and read....
1. The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to Christianity... This is just buhhh, really not very relevant to the course I think, and yes I did read it all already.
2. The Christian Travelers Guide to Great Britain written by none other than Irving Hexham (my prof). It's basically a big list of Christian things to go see in Britain but it has to be read because we have to write about some places and aren't allowed outside sources, so stupid.
/rant
Here's the bit on self-plagiarism, can be found in the above link:
Legally it is impossible under American law to steal from oneself. Therefore, because plagiarism is defined as theft some people argue that self-plagiarism is impossible by definition. This is because people cannot steal from their own work. There are, however,circumstances such as insurance fraud when people defraud others by claiming that something they owned was stolen when it was not.
On the Internet Humanist Forum, professor Paul Brian of the University of Montreal argued that "self-plagiarism," or the recycling of an old work in a new guise, "is also a theft since the author leads the book-buyer to think that there is a new book of his on the market. The author is misleading his/her readers: to me, it is just the same thing as to sell a secondhand car while claiming it's a brand new one" (The Humanist Forum 7/13, 16 April 1992). Perhaps a better analogy is the used car dealer who changes a car's odometer to make it appear much less used than it really is. Such a practice is recognized to be illegal. So too "self-plagiarism" is fraud if not outright theaft (Brogan 1992:453-465). To avoid confusion here perhaps it is better to drop the term "self-plagiarism" and simply call it recycling fraud.
Recycling fraud must be carefully distinguished from the legitimate recycling of a writer's own work that to a greater or lesser extent everyone does. Although recycling fraud in academic publications is a gray area many universities implicitly recognize the practice as fraudulent by publishing rules preventing students from submitting essentially the same essay for credit in different courses. There are also rules against someone submitting the same graduate thesis to different universities. Among established academics self-plagiarism is a problem when essentially the same article or book is submitted on more than one occasion to gain additional salary increments or for purpose of promotion.
Like plagiarism the essence of recycling fraud is the author's attempt to deceive the reader. This happens when no indication is given that the work is being recycled and an effort is made to disguise the original text. The issue is one of the extent of the deception. Disguising a text occurs when an author makes cosmetic changes that cause the same article, chapter, or book to look significantly different when in reality it actually remains unchanged in most of its wording and its central argument. Changing such things as paragraph breaks, capitalization, or the substitution of technical terms using different languages that leads readers to believe they are reading something completely new is recycling fraud when such changes are the only ones an author makes to a text.
The extent of recycling is also an indication of recycling fraud. Academics normally republish revised versions of their Ph.D. thesis. They also often develop different aspects of an argument in several papers that require the repetition of key passages from an original work. This is not recycling fraud if the work develops new insights. It is recycling fraud if the argument, examples, evidence, and conclusions remain the same without the development of new ideas or presentation of additional evidence. In other words it is recycling fraud when two works only differ in their appearance but are presented as separate and distinct works.
It becomes almost a semantic argument - you could go to one extreme and argue that it's unfair to write a paper on topic A because you already wrote a related paper on topic A in another class, and so you have an unfairly less amount of research that you have to do... and that's at least somewhat true, but if the professors don't let you choose to do a new paper and force you to make an identical argument to one you've already made, then they're just asking you to regurgitate the identical paragraph anyway.
but this is all just a school-work kind of argument, in the real world it's something you shouldn't be doing anyway, so you might as well get used to rewording the same paragraph 8 different times
I mean, at this point, it would be pretty ridiculous if I couldn't cite myself on Langston Hughes considering the amount of research I've put into him or the research I've done on the bible.
I think they consider it academic dishonesty if you try to pass it off as new and fresh ideas, when in a previous work you have talked about it in length. That would be plagiarism and is something I would avoid, again, through citing yourself.
Depends on the subject of the paper, though, doesn't it? I generally try to avoid it myself for stylistic reasons (which can lead to some interesting moments), but if you are writing an expository essay, or perhaps a criticism rather than a research paper, or a comparative textual analysis or something, then it may be appropriate.
Also, with regards to citing yourself: don't do it. Seriously, I know you may be crunched for time and you already did very similar work or whatever, but unless you are a big name with lots of published research (Like Chomsky, who cites himself all the time), it's really bad form to cite yourself. It may not even be necessarily against the policies of your particular university, but it just looks bad and lazy.