Self-plagarism is a tricky thing. Some redundancy in publications is virtually unavoidable. If you are reporting new results from an experiment that has been p

Self-plagarism is a tricky thing. Some redundancy in publications is virtually unavoidable. If you are reporting new results from an experiment that has been previously published, you still need to provide a brief summary of how things work but, of course, you reference your previous work. This is as transparent and innocent as things get, and isn't self-plagiarism. However, what if you reproduce a figure published in another journal exactly? Then things can get ugly (Depending on a lot of legalese no researcher should have to worry about.)! To make matters worse, the same experimental setup is frequently used to run experiments that result in several publications. When you have several papers authored by different overlapping groups of researchers in various stages of review simultaneously things can get very confusing. The first paper you submit is frequently the last one published. The last paper you submit will then wind up referencing arxiv pre-prints instead of published articles, and if you did plagiarize yourself by mistake, the publisher of the paper submitted last might have absolutely no chance of detecting it. On top of it all, there is frequently interference from editors and reviewers. A well-written and coherent paper on a theory an experiment testing that theory might be considered "too long" or "too confusing" by a referee, and the editor will jump on that comment and demand the paper be split into two, sometimes only one of which they feel like publishing in their journal. If the researcher had done this of his/her own initiative many would consider it CV-padding! Yes, self-plagiarism can be a means to pump up your publication list, but it also happens innocently because publishing is such a confusing counter-intuitive mess! It's probably an idiotic idea, but some kind of pan-journal version control system, even just for figures, would be a tremendous headache reducer if done right!