On Recycling Our Own Work in the Digital Age

Abstract

The concept of self-plagiarism has been typically examined as a type of research and/or writing malpractice often associated with forms of publication misconduct, such as duplicate publication and data disaggregation. In these and related transgressions, previously published text, data, or other intellectual materials are misrepresented as new content in subsequent publications. These forms of inappropriate reuse will be explored in the context of traditional publication domains, such as journal articles, as well as in other domains of research and scholarship not often addressed by the existing publication ethics literature. The chapter’s discussion of recycling work is grounded in the notion that authors of scientific and scholarly material enter into an implicit contract with their readers, such that a reader will process this type of content under the assumption that such works are accurate, original to the author, and not previously disseminated. Accuracy in science and in scholarship is always a given. However, as researchers and academics often rely on the work of others, readers must be alerted as to when content (e.g., ideas, text, data) are the authors’ own and when they are derived from others’ work. Similarly, as previously disseminated work is sometimes re-examined, readers must always be informed as to the provenance of such work.