Can similarity between a software paper and the software's documentation cause the paper to be rejected? [duplicate]

Question

I am writing an open source software which will be published as a public Github repository (code+binaries) and the accompanying documentation will be available on ReadTheDocs.com platform. I am also planning to write a software paper based on the software and some sections of the paper (~25%) must describe the software.

It's standard practice for journals to run papers through a plagiarism checker. I am concerned that the result may flag the parts from the documentation as plagiarism because they will be similar.

Is there any way to make sure the similarity between parts of the documentation and the manuscript won't cause the paper to be rejected on grounds of (self-)plagiarism?

Edit: This question asks something similar about an Arxiv preprint. My question asks about technical documentation similar to this unrelated project, whereas Arxiv is an accepted medium for publishing preprints. Therefore, I don't see how this can be a duplicate.

Answer 1

If you write the docs and retain copyright to them, then what you describe isn't really plagiarism. Plagiarism is attributing the ideas of others to yourself.

But, the similarities between the two will raise questions unless you cite the docs in the paper, which is a natural thing to do. Make sure you list yourself as author of the docs and all should be well.

The "citation" can be fairly generous, however: "Parts of the following are taken from ... written by this author".

Note also, that if you wait to publish the docs you will have the same problem but in the opposite order and the docs need to reference the paper. It is more complicated in that case, however, since you may need to give up copyright to get the paper published. That would limit the amount of "copying" you can do fairly.

It might be best, however, to paraphrase the docs within the paper, rather than just copy the same wording. It will seem more natural and raise fewer questions. But, technically, it isn't plagiarism, just similarity, since you are the author of both.