Is it self-plagiarism to repurpose a government report into a journal article?

Question

I wrote a report to the state department of transportation for a research project they sponsored. Can I use the same texts/paragraphs from the report to write journal articles? In other words, does it consider plagiarism to do that? I am the author of both, the report and the research papers. Does the final report for a project consider a published work?

Answer 1

Can I use the same texts/paragraphs from the report to write journal articles? In other words, does it consider plagiarism to do that? I am the author of both, the report and the research papers. Does the final report for a project consider a published work?

The short answer to your questions are it depends. The long answer is likely yes, you can probably publish both with some caveats.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with using a project report as the basis for a journal article. Speaking from experience, I have co-authored several completion reports that were used as the basis for manuscripts. For example, the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission Sea Lamprey Control Broad publishes completion reports on their webpage, but still encourages the investigators to publish the work in peer reviewed journal articles. However, there are some important considerations:

• Make sure your funding agency is okay with you publishing their report. On a more positive note, some funding agencies will encourage you to publish.
• Is your completion report public and is it citable? You may or may not need to cite your previous work. Mentioning the completion report in your cover letter would also help address this problem with the journal.
• The completion report likely will not be formatted correctly or written in a style suitable for a journal. Likely your methods section will be okay and possibly the results section. Most likely, the introduction and discussion will need to be adapted to fit the journal's style and tone.

Answer 2

First of all you have to check with the state dept. if they allow publishing the findings/results as most of the time such projects are very confidential.

Secondly, it is better to rephrase your findings in a report. As a matter of fact, the writing norms and styles for report writing are quite different than what the academic audience expect. I am afraid if you submit your report (or excerpt from it) in form of a paper, the reviewers might reject it on basis of its write-up.

Answer 3

This cannot be plagiarism, since it is your own work. It could in principle be self-plagiarism, but since the report you wrote is not an academic paper, this does not really apply either. If the report is public, your journal article should cite it and point out the amount of coincidence.

That said, Sjaffry is right in pointing out that making a paper out of a report typically involves extensive rewrite anyway, since the writing styles tend to differ.