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If I turn in the same project for two different courses without flagging it, that's considered a violation of many academic (teaching) integrity codes. Similarl
by matthewdgreen 3y ago
If I turn in the same project for two different courses without flagging it, that's considered a violation of many academic (teaching) integrity codes. Similarly if you hire me to write a bespoke piece of software (with copyright assigned to you) and I re-use code I've delivered to other clients, that could be considered a damaging violation of our contract. You could refer to both of these cases as "self-plagiarism", but that's just a phrase: the actual harm caused by it is very specific to the context it occurs in. (And any punishments/opprobrium we assign to it should be similarly context-dependent.)
- smeej 3y agoThere's a difference between a school writing up its own set of conduct rules and plagiarism. Any two entities can agree to any set of terms they want. If a school says you have to sign a code of conduct to go there, and it prohibits submitting the same work for more than one course, fine. If someone breaks that rule, accuse them of violating the code of conduct. But that's not plagiarism. "Self-plagiarism" is a contradiction in terms.
- matthewdgreen 3y agoI don't like the term either, and what I'm trying to say is that whereas "plagiarism" is always (to some extent) a bad thing - since we should not steal others' work without credit - "self-plagiarism" is only problematic in specific contexts. It would be better not to use such a loaded term. It's also important to understand that many of the lessons we are taught in school about attribution are deliberately over-emphasized by instructors, in order to impart good citation habits. If frightening students to death about "self-plagiarism" causes them to be unnecessarily forthright in citing their own work, even outside the classroom context, instructors are mostly fine with that.