You probably all know what plagiarism is: using someone else’s work without giving them proper credit. It is a form of theft, a serious breach of academic ethics, and is heavily sanctioned, for students and for researchers alike. But what is the meaning the word “self-plagiarism”? You cannot steal from yourself! Our colleague Catherine Brendow explains.
Old work, new bottle?
Researchers naturally build on their own research and on the research of others. They must cite the work of other researchers that they use (otherwise, they are plagiarising), and they must also cite themselves when they reuse their own work. If they fail to do this, they are passing off old research as new, and are self-plagiarising. This is considered as serious a breach of academic integrity as ordinary plagiarism, and their readers may feel cheated.
Masters students may also be tempted to self-plagiarise, when the topic of an essay is close enough to one of their previous essays. In this case, recycling is not ecology, but fraud. Self-plagiarism can involve using parts of a previous work without properly citing yourself (verbatim or by paraphrasing), using data that you collected for a previous work without acknowledging it, or even repurposing an entire essay and presenting it as new.
Self-plagiarism can be detected by anti-plagiarism software such as Turnitin, which keeps a database all previously submitted work.
Avoiding self-plagiarism
If you are given an assignment that is very similar to an essay you have already written, you must discuss this with your professor, and not reuse previous work without their permission. You must make it clear which part of your essay is not new, by citing yourself, just as you would cite any other source. You can also approach a similar topic in a different way, adopting a new perspective, discovering new insights, which can be enriching. You may even need to change the topic of your essay.
We hope that you now have a better understanding of self-plagiarism and why you should take care to avoid it. If you are in any doubt, discuss it with your professor. And have a look at the library’s page on plagiarism.
Illustration generated using generative AI tools ideogram.ai and OpenArt.ai.
Geneva Graduate Institute Library Blog 