Timeline for Is it Self-Plagiarism to paraphrase my own published work in my thesis without citation?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
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| Jan 18 at 18:01 | comment | added | Dan Romik | @akostadinov respectfully, I don't think your understanding of what "my line of thinking" bears much relation to anything I wrote, so it seems to me we're largely talking past each other. To be clear, I was mainly addressing OP's specific question here and was not attempting to give a comprehensive account of my views about self-plagiarism, which are much more nuanced than "self-plagiarism is bad". Anyway, this is a digression from OP's question which should be the main focus. If there's anything I wrote related to OP's situation that you want to comment about, I'm happy to keep discussing it. | |
| Jan 17 at 17:44 | comment | added | akostadinov | @DanRomik, if assignment requirements are filled with the old homework, then how would redoing something similar just with apples instead of oranges, make student learn something more? Your line of thinking is one of the things that I dislike in education in general. At least an engineer needs to learn to be efficient, not follow some made up ethics rules. Ethics is important but this is made up. | |
| Jan 17 at 0:36 | comment | added | Acccumulation | Another type of self-plagiarism is when you write something for someone, and that person/institution has a IP interest in the work. For instance, if you design logos for a living, and you create two logos for two different clients that are close to being the same, that's self-plagiarism. | |
| Jan 16 at 23:11 | comment | added | David S | @DanRomik It isn't utopian to point out problems or faults where they are present. Also, students can still err here. Students must be mindful not to cross any boundaries that have been clearly established by the instruction given, syllabus, student handbook, etc. Both of the examples in this answer can be largely mitigated by higher standards on the institution side. Shifting the accountability to the student only allows the institution to degrade, it doesn't make better students. Of course, Buffy's answer of breaking the chain of ideas remains a valid problem. | |
| Jan 16 at 19:30 | comment | added | Dan Romik | @DavidS p.s. you sound like a sensible person, but your comments give the impression that you have never grappled with the practical issues that come with teaching a university class, let alone running an entire university. "even 1 instance of duplicate assignments is a failure on the institution's part"? This is laughably utopian; if you think this is a failure, wait until you see the real places where universities fall short of your ideals. | |
| Jan 16 at 19:29 | comment | added | Dan Romik | @DavidS the student is not "automatically" dishonest - they are dishonest if they have been explicitly instructed that reusing earlier graded work without acknowledgement the reuse is not allowed (and most universities' academic honesty policy do indeed include such explicit instructions). Effectively any assignment comes with an implicit statement by the instructor along the lines of "In grading this assignment I assume that any work you submit was done specifically for this assignment. If this assumption is not correct, you must let me know." | |
| Jan 16 at 19:08 | comment | added | David S | @DanRomik In the general sense of this discussion, the student is not automatically dishonest here. There are certain conditions that are not universal that would have to be present for the student to be dishonest here. If those conditions are not met, then it is an undue burden to put the onus on the student to bring it up to the instructor. That's just blaming the student because the instructor or institution's failure to recognize or address the duplication. Now, if the conditions are met where the student is being dishonest, then you have two problems. | |
| Jan 16 at 18:38 | comment | added | Barmar | @DavidS Who said the institution expects this all to be unique? I can easily imagine assigning something at the beginning of Calc II that's similar to the end of Calc I, to make sure the students really got it. If the student did it correctly in Calc I and resubmits that, it serves the purpose. | |
| Jan 16 at 18:34 | comment | added | David S | @Barmar If the institution expects unique work, even 1 instance of duplicate assignments is a failure on the institution's part. If the instructor expects unique work, its on them to ensure their assignments are unique. Something being hard does not absolve accountability. If the institution has a policy against self-plagiarism, every instance they encourage it or are negligent to avoid it is a failure on their part. I will state, the institution being wrong doesn't make the student right and there are exceptions, intentional repetition to name one. | |
| Jan 16 at 17:48 | comment | added | Dan Romik | @DavidS a student who behaves dishonestly cannot blame other people for their dishonesty. The right thing for a student in that situation to do would be to go to their professor, explain that they have already studied the topic of the assignment in another class, and ask whether it is permitted to reuse the work from the other class. The professor is then free to allow it if they agree with your logic, or they can give an alternative assignment, thereby addressing your criticism about duplication of material and avoiding the “institutional failure”. | |
| Jan 16 at 17:43 | comment | added | Barmar | @DavidS While I agree with the sentiment that the student is not at fault, if it's just one assignment with overlap I don't think it's an "institutional failure". Ensuring that all classes in a subject have disjoint syllabi, especially when there are basic and advanced versions of the classes, seems hard. So an early assignment in a class might duplicate something in the more advanced version of the prerequisite. | |
| Jan 16 at 16:17 | comment | added | David S | @akostadinov Is absolutely correct. The 1st example is clearly a failure on the institution that is then blaming the student. If the classes, or instructors, fail to differentiate themselves from other classes, then it is their fault if homework for one class is passable for another. If the point was for the student to explore more, or learn more, then the onus is on the instructor to provide an assignment that would fulfill that goal. If the classes are so similar, then it is an institutional failure for poorly designing a program with too much overlap. But its easier to blame the student. | |
| Jan 16 at 15:41 | comment | added | Dan Romik | @akostadinov see this discussion. | |
| Jan 16 at 13:48 | comment | added | mafu | @akostadinov The problem lies in the fact that the student did not spend the time to explore the subject. Regardless of their current knowledge, they are supposed to learn (even) more. The quality of what they newly learned is graded via their homework. For this reason, they cannot re-use their homework. ---- That said, if there is some final exam, then I do not agree with this reasoning. In this case, their progress is measured anyway so them not doing the homework will be reflected there. | |
| Jan 16 at 11:32 | comment | added | akostadinov | Why creating work suitable for two courses to be a problem? Student was adept enough to create something that suited both needs. Learned whatever it was to be learned in both subjects. I see no issue with that. Sounds like blaming an engineer to reuse previous invention into a new invention. | |
| Jan 16 at 3:15 | vote | accept | oldman | ||
| Jan 15 at 22:22 | history | answered | Dan Romik | CC BY-SA 4.0 |