I am a researcher working in the field of Catalysis. I was working on two seperate reactions (suppose R1 and R2) which were supposed to be the part of two seperate publications.
Reaction R1 has been done by me independently with catalysts A B C, D whereas reaction R2 has been done with collaborators with only catalyst B. One can notice that catalyst B is common in both the cases, therefore some of the characterization data for B are same too . I have already submitted reaction R1 for publication in a journal and it is taking too long to get any response from the editor. On the other hand the collaborators want to submit the reaction R2 soon. I am worried that as some of the data of catalyst B are common in both cases, the plots for catalyst B will be similar. I cannot cite R1 work as it has yet not been published.
Therefore, can it be considered self-plagiarism if I just change the plotting style, colour etc for the characterization data of catalyst B (so that it doesn't seem identical to that used in R1 work) and use it in R2 work? Also, the plots used in R1 contain all the data for four catalysts A, B, C, D in a single figure but the plots used in R2 would contain ony the data for B in one figure; therefore can these two plots be considered non-identical? Currently, it is not possible to do fresh characterization for catalyst B, which might have solved the problem.
Can anyone give any suggestions?
