4 ms·
It's bad manners and a waste of people's time and attention to present previously published work as novel. Repeating a phrase or two in a document's introducti
by MengerSponge 3mo ago
It's bad manners and a waste of people's time and attention to present previously published work as novel.
Repeating a phrase or two in a document's introduction isn't going to raise flags from any serious people, but copying data, analysis, or large swaths of text? That's a paddlin'.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- rowanG077 3mo agoThat makes no sense, either people don't know about the previous work and thus it has clear value. Or they do and they can easily skip it. Beside for a lot of work it be great if you could just literally copy and paste fragments if your previous work to deepen out some reasoning.
- vladms 3mo agoMany forums have/had policies about not doing cross posting (in different categories). I find this similar. Yes, maybe from the "plagiarism" angle is not very relevant, but I would prefer not to have a system in which people try to "flood" repositories (journals, etc) with the same thing over and over. People looking for new information, people reviewing will get most of the burden to "keep things clean" while for the poster that is not a problem.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- Dylan16807 3mo agoIf they don't know about the previous work, they won't know to go there for more. If they do, it doesn't mean they instantly recognize it and know to skip. Just mark it, it'll take seconds.
- MengerSponge 3mo agoThe reasons for not marking it are ignorance and fraud. Both are terrible looks for an academic.
- _the_inflator 3mo agoI disagree. I think you are contradicting yourself. If a previous work has been copy and pasted, and a novel reader doesn't know, wouldn't the reader benefit from the option to actually read the previous work as a whole? All credible authors I read mentioned quotes from earlier works. In fact, that is on the one hand an ego boost as a prolific writer, and also helps sell more copies in case of being purchasable. Most credible university profs in Germany from the 1990th for example always referenced their former work and mention changes of the context, or in case of a theory, modifications. Books for example, are reprinted and it has been mentioned whether changes to the content has been done. Personally I really see no problem, leaving the decision, whether you copied something or not, to the reader.
- xp84 3mo agoI think it depends. The popular exposure to this idea, where you can be accused of self-plagiarism for a paper you write for a class, does seem stupid, because obviously your prof hasn't read your paper you wrote in another class and you're not 'wasting' anyone's time. I can also appreciate that in a "publishing papers as research" context you're completely right.
- MengerSponge 3mo agoCourse credit is not the same as professional certifications. You can apply past expertise/work to as many different certifications as you can manage. Submitting previously graded work for a new course wastes your own time. It also wastes the professor's time, because they assigned that writing for you to develop a specific skill, and you're trying to not practice whatever they're trying to teach you. If you have a perfectly matched essay to the assignment, you should talk to the professor about how the assignment can be adapted.
- xp84 3mo agoI see where you're coming from, and perhaps because I'm absolutely not cut out to be in academia, that's where my bias comes from -- I'm inclined always to view education as a means to an end, and that's certainly far from accurate. The interesting thing is that in coursework context, plagiarism of any type is merely a massive self-own, since you are (probably) paying money and then purposely cheating yourself of the learning that you paid for. To me, I feel like it needs a different name than plagiarism in the academia or professional world, where you're taking ideas from others and slapping your own name on them for clout or for money. In this case, a real victim exists and you also stand to gain from it if not caught.
- bborud 3mo agoI am flabbergasted. How self-absorbed does one have to be to be offended by someone re-using sections of a paper one has done earlier in a later paper? No, seriously. If I write 5.000 words on a topic and then re-use 500 words I myself have written earlier without attribution because they are appropriate to the current article, how do you make that «bad manners». I meant what I said about people who can’t see this without help earlier.
- bawolff 3mo agoI mean, i dont know how things work in academia, but if i was reading a fiction novel, and it turns out half of it was copied from some other novel i already read, i would feel a bit cheated. So i could imagine the same thing applying to academic works.
- jubilanti 3mo agoHow about you take that stick out of your ass and stop assuming that norms which have existed for generations are, what, just some kind of mass mental illness?
- bborud 3mo agoYou do understand that you look somewhat ridiculous when engaging in the very behavior that the accusation of wooden matter up one’s rectum implies? You are arguing my point for me by way of self-parody.
- MengerSponge 3mo agoIf it's a new article it should say something new. You can save your reader's time and your own effort by quoting some of those words, or by citing all of them. That trims almost 500 superfluous words from your paper, and what's left will be better, which respects your reader.