Copyright and Plagiarism: Self-Plagiarism

Self-plagiarism is a tricky concept.  This is because plagiarism usually involves stealing the work of others and passing that work off as your own.  You may wonder, how you can steal your own work and pass it off as your own?

In the case of self-plagiarism, you are taking work that you have previously created and received credit for, and trying to receive credit for that work for a second time in another context.  Although you technically cannot steal from yourself, you are practicing double-dipping and trying to receive credit for the work more than once, which is dishonest.

To avoid self-plagiarism use the same citation guidelines they would use to summarize, quote, or paraphrase other authors, whenever you reuse portions of your own previously published work.  Do not take any short cuts.  You need to cite your own previous work just like you cite the work of others.  Unlike regular plagiarism, self-plagiarism does not involve theft; instead it involves a misrepresentation of when you did the work.

All the situations proposed by these questions are examples of self-plagiarism.  By citing your previous work, you are avoiding self-plagiarizing, but by incorrectly citing the work (i.e. omitting dates, pages, title, etc.) you move yourself back into the realm of self-plagiarism.

There are a multitude of both free and commercial plagiarism checking services out on the web.  Most journals, publishers, funding agencies, and academic institutions use these services to check if material is plagiarized. Since these services will catch both self-plagiarism and regular plagiarism, they will catch you if your work includes self-plagiarism.  Most of these services both check previous published books and articles, and webpages.  If the material you copied was previously posted on a webpage, even a webpage you created, you will get accused of plagiarism.