The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Plagiarism and academic dishonesty
Ultimanecat
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
After reading and posting in another thread about essays, a bit of a general question came into my mind which is especially pertinent since I'm actually returning to school soon.
Towards the end of my undergraduate studies, I realized that many of the classes I was taking pretty much overlapped in content with others that I was taking or had already taken. By my senior year, I had amassed over one hundred essays on various topics, and I realized that I had written on and received favorable grades on many topics that may be covered in my new classes.
So, to save myself time, I often would lift large portions - or entire essays - of my previous work and insert them into the new work. One quarter, I wrote one essay for two courses, and just adapted it as necessary to the actual content of the class.
Now, I thought I was just being smart and allocating my time and resources well, but my graduate (TA) friends later told me that if they knew someone was doing that in one of their classes, there would be bad times ahead for the perpetrator. Like "instant F and possible academic dishonesty charges" bad times. Luckily, this never was the case for me, and I got out just fine.
I realize this likely won't be the case as I move forward with my academics and have more discretion over where to put my attention, but looking through my previous essays...there is a lot of stuff here. Is it really possible to plagiarize yourself? Is it at least academically dishonest to use your own previous work in such a manner?
Towards the end of my undergraduate studies, I realized that many of the classes I was taking pretty much overlapped in content with others that I was taking or had already taken. By my senior year, I had amassed over one hundred essays on various topics, and I realized that I had written on and received favorable grades on many topics that may be covered in my new classes.
So, to save myself time, I often would lift large portions - or entire essays - of my previous work and insert them into the new work. One quarter, I wrote one essay for two courses, and just adapted it as necessary to the actual content of the class.
Now, I thought I was just being smart and allocating my time and resources well, but my graduate (TA) friends later told me that if they knew someone was doing that in one of their classes, there would be bad times ahead for the perpetrator. Like "instant F and possible academic dishonesty charges" bad times. Luckily, this never was the case for me, and I got out just fine.
I realize this likely won't be the case as I move forward with my academics and have more discretion over where to put my attention, but looking through my previous essays...there is a lot of stuff here. Is it really possible to plagiarize yourself? Is it at least academically dishonest to use your own previous work in such a manner?
SteamID : same as my PA forum name
Ultimanecat on
0
Posts
How did that not answer your questions?
If I were publishing this stuff, I guess the problem may actually crop up. As it stands, at least some writers get by so long as they give notice that parts of the work are borrowed from previous works.
Frankly, I think the idea that you can plagiarize yourself is fucking retarded. If professors are giving you assignments so similar that you can do that and still get a good grade, I'd say that's a problem with what they're assigning rather than with what you're writing.
But again, check your school's academic honesty policy. That should define plagiarism for you in excruciating detail.
I know at my university, it was considered plagiarism to hand in work that was handed in for other classes. Getting caught meant an instant "F" and possible academic probation.
[edit] beated
But of course check your college's policy . . . A glance at Wikipedia shows that some colleges (though not all) do consider it to be "self-plagiarism."
(I could definitely see situations where self-copying would be wrong, like if you published a book with Publisher A, then took the exact same text and published a book with Publisher B. You would be stealing some of Publisher A's profits. But I still wouldn't call that "plagiarism" since you would be stealing/depriving them of money, not stealing someone else's words/idea. JMO.)
Even if your school does not explicitely forbid this kind of practice in its handbook, it would likely defer judgment to the professor of the course. So in the future, check not only with the school handbook, but the professor as well.
It is also much more likely that you'll find it allowable if you characterize it as rewriting or adapting parts of other essays as opposed to characterizing it as copying and pasting sections of essays or handing in the same essay for two classes.
edit @ LadyM: In your example self-copying would be wrong not because you would be plagiarizing yourself, but because you're either violating Publisher A's copyright (if you've transferred to the copyright to him, or you're probably violating your contract with Publisher A.
Yeah, I did that at least once :oops:.
But I'm really not too sure about essays where I just borrowed a paragraph or two.
My new school doesn't seem to mention it at all.
I'd say don't bother. The odds of anything coming of it are incredibly slim, and the policy is incredibly silly, but there's no reason to risk the rather harsh penalties just so you can save at most a few hours of your time.
From my own experiences, stances are usually either no or just tell me first or you can use big blocks of text as long as you quote yourself so that it's clear that you took it from another paper that you wrote.
It will be counted as plagiarism in your submitted work, because that's how it works in academic writing, and that's usually the rules that are followed (because we like to pretend we are training you all to be little academics).
It looks like at my new school, there is no official policy on self-plagiarism. We'll see I guess if it ever becomes an issue.
Personally, I would be proactive about things like plagiarism, ask teachers and stuff, when something can ruin you entire academic career, "i didn't know" just doesn't cut it.
I didn't mean that to be read as "I'll do it and see if I get caught", but as "If I see an opportunity, I'll run it by the professor first".
That doesn't mean what you are proposing is ethical, based on your school's academic standards, but I'm with Than—whatever this is, it falls squarely in the NOT PLAGIARISM column.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with taking research or writing you've done previously and using that in current assignments as long as you still properly cite any references you may have used. It seems like someone who would prohibit that misunderstands the purpose of academic work, which is to demonstrate knowledge.
Disclaimer—if you excerpt something from a previous paper, and the original passage was plagiarized, then obviously it's still plagiarism if you use it again.
Runningman - universities would regard it as plagiarism.
IT'S NOT PLAGIARISM, for the love of the holy dictionary. Maybe it's a violation of the academic code of honesty, or a violation of the professor's personal class policy, or it may even be considered cheating or dissembling or whatever. But you cannot plagiarize yourself. Plagiarism is passing someone else's work off as your own.
Maybe a university would consider quoting yourself as plagiarism. The people running those people would be idiots. You can't just decide a word means something different than it actually does and have people take you seriously.
There are four lights!
If it were me, I'd do it and then start a lawsuit if I was expelled under the notion that "being able to academically plagiarize yourself is fucking retarded." I'd lose, but I'd bring the shit storm down on them via the media.
OP: If your academic handbook says so, you can't do it, simple as that. If it doesn't explicitly say so, I don't see why not. The notion that you have to have a different train of thought, writing style, whatever else the second time about the same topic if lunacy.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
The fact is that in any form of plaigiarism code for universities and academic diciplines, passing off previously published/submitted work as original to the current piece of work is against the rules, and usually comes within the rules of plaigiarism.
We all know that it's not exactly what the word means, but it is included within that section of the regulations.
At the end of the day, don't do it. It's totally against the idea of what thwe work you are being asked to do is against. Of course, you can look at work you've previously done and use the notes you made for that and the references, etc. BUT, just copying and pasting whole sentences and/or paragraphs is aginst the rules, and the spirit of the academic community, and if you get found out, you will fail that paper and could be hauled up in front of some form of discipline committee for going against the rules.
Then again, maybe I'm just bitter. As a photography major I am held to the same rules. I cannot take photos for one assignment and then go into another class and be like "hey, this fits the description well enough. Sure, I COULD do something new, but these are really good so why do I need to?"
Yeah, it sucks...I hate writing papers, but the point of college is to do the work, get the experience, practice and get good. If you don't need the practice anymore, then it shouldn't be that hard and you should just do it anyway. If it is that hard, then you need the practice.
I have to respectfully disagree with this. It's my experience that teachers typically give essays where the topic is fairly open. This means having either a big list to choose from, maybe a general direction to go in or a very broad topic. I have taken many classes and never had one where I HAD to write the same essay and use the same information and felt like I needed to lift parts of my other papers. But, if I chose to, I could've done something like that fairly easily at a couple of points.
Every class covers something different, some of them do cover similar subjects and and sometimes an essay could apply to both. I don't believe it's the teacher's job to co-ordinate their assignments with every other teacher's assignments to exclude topics that overlap. That's the job of the academic honesty policy you sign stating that you won't use your old work for multiple classes.
If I really liked the process of bubble gum manufacturing and was asked to write a paper on it by 4 different people I wouldn't write 4 different papers. That's not efficient is is basically against everything everyone has ever taught me about doing a job or project. Do it once, do it efficient, and reuse as much as possible.
People who go "well you shouldn't" are likely advocates of busy work and hard ball a syllabus down to minute details. The kinds of classes where you don't learn anything and recite a textbook over and over.
However. Take your previous article, cite yourself, and improve it would be a cool way to go about it.
I know that I pulled this off a few times when I had overlapping material and a really awesome thesis. In most cases I simply approached the professor and asked permission. Generally it was fine as long as I wrote a paper which was of length equal to the combined two assignments. Of course, this only works for simultaneous assignments, but it does, generally, work.
You'll run into problems if you try to submit past work for credit. Especially if professors speak amongst themselves about what an awesome essay you wrote, only to discover that another member of the department agrees due to receiving the same assignment in years past.
I have referred (with correct reference) to works which I had completed and were on file with the department, and treated the small excerpts as references.
But, again, it isn't about "stealing one's own work" the issue is in the "amount of work required for credit."
They usually cite their previous publications, though.
Perhaps it's different for different majors....but, seriously, I can't imagine going through a whole bunch of majors where the only option is to write about one aspect of one subject.
So, your major is bubble gum manufacturing. Each class you have to write something to do with bubble gum. Even with that there's the history of bubble gum manufacturing, the types of bubble gum, bubble gum ingredients, bubble gum demographics, what bubble gum means to you. All of those topics could be used for your various writing intensive courses.
If you seriously get assigned an essay and can't write about anything different than you've already written about, go talk to the teacher about it. I really just don't think it's going to happen in most people's undergraduate academic career(I can't speak for masters/PH. D when you go into thesis territory).
Actually no. Considering I have ADD, I work, I have plenty of photography things to be doing and I have trouble actually sitting down and making myself write I think it would be just great to not have to write another essay. But I'm not going to cheat my way through. I'm not getting into morals, it's just semantics. If you turn in a paper for 2 classes, according to the colleges rules it is cheating. Plus by the time it's done I've usually grown and learned something that's going to help me out(even if it is that I don't want to read Steinbeck again for a very long time). If you have to write a paper about it, hopefully something sinks in and sticks right?
Also, by writing another essay wouldn't you be learning something besides reciting a textbook over and over? You're researching and developing a paper, that's not repeating yourself over and over unless you purposely choose a topic that is extremely similar.
I do wonder what kind of university you are going to that requires you to write the same assignments time and time again.
EDIT: citing the sources you used in previous work is fine. A footnote saying "Cf. that essay handed in last semester" is not.
Just reword it I guess. It seems we've all come to the consensus that "handing in the same paper multiple times" is bad no matter what.
There's no law against plagiarism, so it's defined however each university or group of academics applies it. Technically, you can't plagiarize yourself, but handing in a paper you wrote last year for work you should be doing for this semester is academically dishonest, so is treated as if it was plagiarism because the end result is the same -- not doing work for your class, but expecting a grade as if you had.
Academics work on the same topic and ideas all the time -- by writing new papers on the subject. If you already know about something because you wrote about it in the past, well, that makes writing new papers that much easier.
In the OP's case, the proper way to do this is to review what you wrote, check the sources again, and then write the new paper (from scratch). It should go quickly because you still remember many of the ideas, but there's nothing academically dishonest about being familiar with a topic.
For academics that do lift from their previous work, it ends up in an acknowledgement stating something like "Portions of this paper were reproduced from the author's dissertation on the subject." I doubt you're at that level of writing, though.
Ahh, but that's a little different than citing a paper you wrote, since the questionnaire is primary research that you did. Using data you collected and applying it in a new paper isn't the same as lifting analysis you wrote.
I find nothing wrong with taking the concepts and ideas you generated in earlier papers and working them into a new paper you are writing. I have problems with taking entire sections or an entire paper and submitting it as something new. EggyToast has hit the nail on the head WRT my opinion on the subject - when you get a new assignment, even if it is on a subject you have covered before, you should be writing something new - because you may learn something new or think about things in new ways.
This is how I feel about it with one caveat.
Don't use your old work completely.
Like tsmvengy (and most everyone else here) said, using your old work as a basis should be perfectly fine for generating ideas or structure.
Lifting it and using it as-is is a little more of a grey area. I wouldn't do it. If for no other reason than it's really lazy, and may not mesh well with the rest of your paper.
Again, this isn't an issue with plagiarism or self-plagiarism. This is an issue of working the credit hours for a course. It just falls under the plagiarism clause because that is the system set up to deal with academic dishonesty referring to the assigned, written word.
Correct. It's not plagiarism, it's just dishonest. Cheating maybe?