Nothing is safe from lawsuits. There is no mechanism to filter that a copyright lawsuit doesn’t have merit and gets stamped and returned to sender. Maybe on fictional TV shows they resolve things quickly, but not in real life. That’s what the court system is for, which is time consuming, expensive and stressful.
If you “ripped off” someone else’s work in any way, you can expect a lawsuit. Even if you didn’t intentionally rip them off, you can still expect a lawsuit.
If a student is given the same assignment from two different classes and they are the original author of the work, there is nothing wrong with turning it in to both classes without mention of the other. There would be no reason to do this nor would the professors from either class care. If anything it would embarrass the professors they are offering redundant assignments to students.
If you wrote a term paper in high school on honey bees and are now doing research on honey bees in graduate school, it would be to the author’s benefit to cite their high school term paper or at least mention it. I don’t think any sane person in academic would consider this on the same level of scandal such as cheating on an exam or turning in work that wasn’t your own.
Really, you people would cite a high school term paper in your graduate school project? Your writing style would surely have improved, your knowledge would have greatly expanded–otherwise why be in school?
But in any case it would not be plagiarism, which is taking someone else’s written expression and pretending it’s your own expression. Check the definition. Appropriating someone else’s words.
If a student turns in the same paper for two different classes, that may very well be academic cheating, but it isn’t plagiarism. Of course definitions can change but “self-plagiarism” is a lazy construct that kind of sounds like an oxymoron.
Also re: Cairo Carol’s consultant, I had to laugh, because I did some work for an engineering consulting company and they had whole libraries of boilerplate for various situations, which was used for multiple clients who had the same or similar situations, and why not? I have no idea if anyone complained but I don’t see why they would. If the situation was the same, the conclusions would be the same, and the consultant was paid for the conclusion and for knowing when and how to apply it. If they got that right, why should the client care if they did the original research on the same topic for a previous client?
And it seems like SafeAssign is soon going to run into the million-monkey rule. I actually ran into something like this once. I was about 3/4 of the way through a 3000-word article on a guy and his business when he sent me a pile of stuff previously published about him and the business. One of them, in fact written by a friend and colleague of mine, took exactly the same slant I was taking, and even had some of the same direct quotes from the guy, because apparently he said exactly the same thing every time he sat down in front of a writer and answered questions, and they were the typical questions anyone would think of asking. So I had to rethink and rewrite my piece, which in theory should have made it better. But I don’t think it did.
Yes, if it is related to the research topic and this is your passion. If in the previous paper you interviewed a famous scientist who’s research is now part of your graduate students, you’d be stupid to leave it out because it adds some dynamic to your work that others don’t have.
This is a topic I have some immediate interest in. I am writing a survey paper. It’s not supposed to contain new material, it’s supposed to summarize accepted material as a teaching aid. I have copyright permissions to use several existing papers.
I copied extensively from those papers, one of which I wrote. I tried to be careful to footnote the material I copied. I debated whether to footnote my own paper, and decided that was appropriate. But I’m curious what others think.
NO, not always.
Its akin to releasing the second addition of a book. You don’t have to say
“This part remained unchanged from edition one” anywhere.
What people are saying about “you should credit it” MIGHT be true.
So you should probably make it a reference , the proper place for credits in the academic context.
1+1=2.
Where did I just cut and paste that from ? should I reference it ?
As there are no “second editions” is academic papers,its actually very often done that the original paper is cut and paste…
AIM ? cut and paste
Method ? cut and paste , perhaps a correcting or clarifying addition put in.
It could be the results that are reworked.
or perhaps just the conclusion…
It would seem to be that the conclusion might be the place to mention the previous paper and explain why this paper has so much to duplicate.
"A previous paper, produced such and a such a conclusion but it was erroneous because… "
Well, obviously, but in the context of nothing being absolutely safe from lawsuits, plagiarizing in a way which does not violate copyright law is as safe as most things.
I know someone whose undergraduate thesis turned into his doctoral dissertation. Of course, “turned into” does not mean verbatim copying and doubtless wasn’t. Still I don’t think he had any obligation to cite his undergrad thesis. For one thing it was not published, so it would have been a useless citation. Just remember that the first reason for citation is that the reader can go read the place cited. Giving the authors credit is a secondary reason. And if you are that author, it can get pointless. I know at least some people who are into citation counting and all too ready to cite themselves.
Insofar as plagiarism is illegal copying, my answer to the OP is a clear NO.
… which it isn’t.
Pleased as I am to be acknowledged for my taxonomy, to my shame I regurgitated a portion of one paper in grad school for another. In that case, FWIW, the minimally recast material was added gravy, so to speak, for extra impressiveness. My Professor to her credit smelled a rat, but didn’t pursue it.
Published Experts are not immune for this (leaving aside the usual dissertation–>first book deal); they soon become known as Published Lazy Scholars, and are treated accordingly.
Mr. Bloom - I applaud your honesty and forthrightness in dealing with this awkward situation. My hat is off to you!!
