I was not party to Johan's and Ken's discussion on self-plagiarism but since I disagree with damned near everything I've read on the subject, I suspect that my thoughts may be distinct from their exchange. Although this may be obvious to some, it is not clear to all so I will start by pointing out what plagiarism is and is not.

Plagiarism is not copyright infringement. It is the taking of undue credit. I object to speaking of copyright and other "intellectual property" law in terms of theft (and, you'll note by my use of quotes, I object to the phrase "intellectual property") but if copyright infringement parallels theft in some ways, plagiarism does not. Plagiarism is fraud in that there is personal gain from a lie. But copyright is a legal question and applies broadly; plagiarism is defined by the ethical standards of specific groups.

The rest of this email is a quick cut-and-paste job from something I have written but not yet published. As such, it may have some of the problems that many quick cut-and-paste jobs do.

Syracuse University's writing program chair Rebecca Moore Howard, one of the relatively few clear, humane, and rational voices regarding plagiarism, points out that "less culturally burdened terms: fraud, insufficient citation, and excessive repetition" would be more useful than using the word "plagiarism." [Rebecca Moore Howard "Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism" College English]

It would be better to instead explain problems that get lumped together under the "plagiarism" rubric with terms from Moore's list (and beyond)—"fraud, insufficient citation, and excessive repetition," etc. If reusing previous work implies new research that was not done and the implication is used for the writer's advantage, that's fraud. Citing oneself may seem like an exercise in narcissism but if citation of previously published material is expected so that readers understand the development of a subject, why wouldn't that apply to notes on the author's own role in that development? The failure to cite oneself also confuses the record regarding not just who said what but when.

Presumably, the objection to "excessive repetition" is that it implies that the writer has accomplished more than she actually has. Padding with one's "own" material is no less padding than the same practice using "someone else's" work. (I hope that my scare quotes point out the problems of assigning ownership while still allowing identification of actual contributions.)

Concerns about the acceptability of "excessive repetition" are not limited to academic research. Mary Findley, an associate professor of humanities at Vermont Technical College in Randolph Center, received an apology from Martha Stewart Living and ultimately from Martha Stewart herself for unacknowledged republishing of recipes in a holiday issue when Findley complained about the practice. [Tanzina Vega "A Halloween Disruption for Martha Stewart Fan" The New York Times September 25, 2011] Nobody could dismiss the objections by saying "you can't steal your own writing" because theft and ownership were not the problem. Even though copyright claims could have been a problem in Lehrer's case, the problem was a betrayal of trust—the breaking of implied promises of providing new material.

There are, of course, many legitimate reasons for repetition. University of California Berkeley professor Pamela Samuelson points out that the reuse of prose may be needed to set the stage for a new contribution. In many cases, different articles may cover roughly the same ground for different audiences. [Pamela Samuelson "Self Plagiarism or Fair Use?" Communication of the ACM August 1994 p 25 http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/SelfPlagiarism.pdf] Iain Chalmers, one of the founders of the medical NGO Cochrane Collaboration, put it this way in a letter to The Lancet: "I reuse my previously used words intentionally in my repeated attempts to persuade readers and editors to take serious problems seriously." [Iain Chalmers The Lancet volume 374 issue 9699 Oct 24–Oct 30, 2009]

In some fields—especially in the humanities—it is not uncommon that an entire academic career might consist of revisiting, reworking, and refining ideas about the same specific subject. The expectation that any passage of the writing be unique is not as strong in such cases. This can represent the flip side of Samuelson's varied audiences where, say, philosophers might reasonably assume that the reader was familiar with their previous work.

In the arts—academic or otherwise—a creator's style might be defined by consistent use of elements through different works. One would not be surprised if characters reappear in subsequent novels; that's a signature of several of our most celebrated writers. If motifs or styles appear in films, we see that as evidence of auteur status. Whether this is always to be celebrated is not without controversy. Although legendary movie director Alfred Hitchcock claimed that "Self-plagiarism is style," [The Observer [London], August 8, 1976] others would dismiss style as self plagiarism.

Condemnations of self-plagiarism aside, artists and analysts "returning to the scene of the crime" should be encouraged. In nearly any worthwhile endeavor, it is not a singular effort that matters. We all build on the work of others; if we are lucky, we get to build on our own work, too. We digest our own thoughts along with those of others. We discover that we didn't exhaust a line of thought (and on occasion, we figure out how we were wrong in our earlier attempts at making sense of the world.) Honesty in doing this is vital but a simple and neat set of rules cannot apply in all fields and all situations.

Acts that might be called plagiarism or self-plagiarism are not unlike art critic John Haber's description of copies: "Of course, there are copies. There is just no such thing as 'the copy.' Copying in art school, casting a sculpture, printing a Weston, and extending a quilted pattern can all take place. Only each act at a distinct time and place tells its own story—about what it copied, about itself, and about us." [John Haber The Reusable Past]

In the same way, the various acts we call plagiarism (and the various acts we call self-plagiarism) tell different stories—stories about our allegiances, our professional statuses, our beliefs about others, our values, and our characters. Even though lampreys and the Tyrannosaurus Rex are both examples of vertebrates, we learn little about the nature of our spines by using broad terms.

 

Gunnar
—————
Gunnar Swanson
gunnarswanson.com
+1 254 258-7006




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