Re-Using Text from One's Own Previously Published Papers: An Exploratory Study of Potential Self-Plagiarism
Abstract
A preliminary, two-part study explored the extent to which authors reuse portions of their own text from previously published papers. All 9 articles from a recent issue of a psychology journal were selected as target papers. Up to 3 of the most recent references cited in each of the target articles and written by the same authors were also obtained. All target articles and their corresponding references were stored digitally. Then, using specialized software, each reference was compared to its target article to assess the number of strings of text identical to both papers. Only one of the nine target articles reused significant amounts of text from one of its references. To explore further the possibility of additional text reuse, the references in each of the 9 sets of papers were compared against each other. The new comparison identified 5 pairs of papers with a substantial number of identical strings of text of 6 consecutive words in length or longer, but most of the reused text was confined to the Method section. The results suggest that some of these authors reuse their own text with some frequency, but this was largely confined to complex methodological descriptions of a research design and procedure.
Get full access to this article
View all access and purchase options for this article.
References
American Psychological Association. (1994) Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. (4th ed.) Washington, DC: Author.
American Psychological Association. (2001) Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. (5th ed.) Washington, DC: Author.
Biederman I. (1989) “Recognition-by-components: A theory of human image understanding”: Clarification. Psychological Review, 96, 2.
Bird S. (2002) Self-plagiarism and dual and redundant publications: What is the problem? Commentary on ‘Seven ways to plagiarize: Handling real allegations of research misconduct’. Science and Engineering Ethics, 8, 543–544.
Hamid P. N. (2003) Apology for duplicate publication. Social Behavior and Personality, 31, 496.
Roig M. (1999) When college students' attempts at paraphrasing become instances of potential plagiarism. Psychological Reports, 84, 973–982.
Roig M. (2001) Plagiarism and paraphrasing criteria of college and university professors. Ethics and Behavior, 11, 307–323.
Roig M., deJacquant J. (2000) Guidelines on plagiarism in writing manuals across various disciplines. Poster paper presented at the first Office of Research Integrity's conference on Research Integrity, Bethesda, MD, November.
Roig M., Johnson B. (2000) Development of a computer program to detect plagiarized text. Paper presented at the symposium: War of the words: Detecting and preventing plagiarism, at the 71st Eastern Psychological Association, Baltimore, MD.
Roig M., Marks A. (2004) Integrity in ‘Instructions to authors’: An exploratory study in a sample of psychology journals. Paper presented at the Third Office of Research Integrity's Conference on Research Integrity Conference, San Diego, CA.
Scheetz M. D. (2002) Promoting integrity through “Instructions to authors”—a preliminary analysis. In Proceedings: Investigating Research Integrity. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services. Pp. 285–295.
Schein M. (2001) Redundant publications: From self-plagiarism to “Salami-Slicing.” New Surgery, 1, 139–140.
Waldron T. (1992) Is duplicate publication on the increase? British Medical Journal, 304, 1029.
Cite article
Cite article
Cite article
OR
Download to reference manager
If you have citation software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice
Information, rights and permissions
Information
Published In
Article first published: August 2005
Issue published: August 2005
PubMed: 16279303
Authors
Metrics and citations
Metrics
Article usage*
Total views and downloads: 140
*Article usage tracking started in December 2016
Articles citing this one
Receive email alerts when this article is cited
Web of Science: 27 view articles Opens in new tab
Crossref: 13
-
On Recycling Our Own Work in the Digital Age
-
On Recycling Our Own Work in the Digital Age
-
On Recycling Our Own Work in the Digital Age
-
Text recycling in STEM: A text-analytic study of recently published re...
-
Peering into Publication Ethics
-
Self-Plagiarism Research Literature in the Social Sciences: A Scoping ...
-
Severity of Types of Violations of Research Ethics: Perception of Iran...
-
On Recycling Our Own Work in the Digital Age
-
Telling the Same Tale Twice: Déjà vu and the Shades of Grey in Self-Pl...
-
Author responsibilities and disclosures at the Journal o...
-
Identifying duplicate content using statistically improbable phrases
-
Déjà vu—A study of duplicate citations in Medline
-
THE PLAGIARISM POLICY OF THE American Journal of Nursing
Figures and tables
Figures & Media
Tables
View Options
Get access
Access options
If you have access to journal content via a personal subscription, university, library, employer or society, select from the options below:
loading institutional access options
Alternatively, view purchase options below:
Purchase 24 hour online access to view and download content.
Access journal content via a DeepDyve subscription or find out more about this option.
