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I wrote a Master's thesis a couple of years ago (which is available to view from my University's online service; so it's out there) and am now doing a PhD. Some passages from my Master's thesis is relevant to my PhD and could be used in my PhD literature review. If it matters, the masters thesis is not published and I am studying in a UK university.
Am I allowed to copy chunks of text from my masters thesis into my PhD thesis?
No. It's called self-plagiarism. You can of course cite results from your Master's thesis, and even quote it, but only if you clearly indicate the source. That it wasn't published doesn't make a difference.
I did my PhD studies in Sweden. In Sweden it is common to write two theses: a licentiate thesis after roughly 2 years, and a PhD thesis at the end. The second one is a natural extension of the first one, so this question came up. One person said one should rephrase everything, but we thought this was silly. Instead, I wrote a preface in my PhD thesis with the following:
This text can be considered a continuation of the so-called licentiate thesis (Holl, 2011). In the Swedish academic system, the licentiate thesis is a thesis very similar in structure to the PhD thesis, that PhD candidates are encouraged to write approximately halfway through their PhD studies. A lot of the material published here was already published in the licentiate thesis.
Self-plagiarism occurs if you claim information is new, when you've already used it before. Therefore, if you write something like this in a preface, you are not committing self-plagiarism.
However, you should still check if your university has any rules against it.
In UK, this was strictly not allowed (I had asked a similar question to my guide on my Masters thesis). As Johanna correctly says, it is considered "self plagiarism" (you copied from yourself!) and while I do not agree with it, this is a common criteria.
For the same reason, you are not allowed to take any article / essay written by you earlier, and use it in your PhD thesis or your Masters research thesis.
The rationale, I believe, is that each work during your studies should be original and unique, different from what you have written earlier. It cannot build up on your earlier work (at least in the written word - in thoughts of course you have all through been building up on your past knowledge and learning)
This is a matter for local policies at the university in question.
At the university I got my PhD from you are required to declare what (if any) material in your thesis have been submitted for previous qualifications in the thesis front matter. The examiners will presumablly take that into consideration when deciding if you have done a sufficient ammount of new work.
