[AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"

[Steven Alter]

The AIS should not create, re-use, or amplify nonsense. The term
“self-plagiarism” not only sounds non-sensical, but is also dangerous
nonsense because it seems to have become one word with two totally
inconsistent meanings:  1) the unethical and deceitful practice of trying
to publish one article twice by hiding its previous publication from
journal editors and 2) the desirable and commonly accepted practice of
building on an author’s past research and other existing knowledge as part
of the scientific process of creating and extending knowledge. The
unfortunate invention and use of a nonsense term elsewhere in academia
(e.g., in the APA Manual) does not require that we use it. Deceitful and
unethical attempts to republish the same research without further extension
should be called double-dipping, or something like that, and should be
punished (but only if there is a practical way to avoid discouraging
dissemination of new ideas for comment and feedback through working papers,
conferences, etc.)  On the contrary, a researcher’s personal reuse of
his/her previously published words, sentences, paragraphs, examples,
diagrams, data, etc. should be encouraged (not discouraged) if the reuse is
part of a genuine extension of previous publications and if there is no
problem with copyright infringement. Neither 1) nor 2) above should be
called plagiarism or self-plagiarism.


Here is a bit more explanation:


** Re-use as part of knowledge creation: Publishing extensions of one's own
research should not be considered an academic misdemeanor. On the contrary,
extending past research is fundamental to the creation and extension of
knowledge. Most genuinely valuable research is cumulative in nature. A good
way to encourage irrelevance is to warn researchers that they will be
accused of repeating themselves if they publish more than one or two papers
developing a particular viewpoint, theory, example, or analysis of a
specific dataset. I am sure that almost anyone whose research has proved
influential and genuinely useful could be accused and found guilty of the
academic misdemeanor of self-plagiarism.


** Need to promote important ideas:  Furthermore, the practical aspects of
developing and communicating knowledge require that most researchers who
actually want to promote a viewpoint or theory (rather than just creating a
list of unrelated publications for a resume) will repeat aspects of past
research in multiple publications. An excellent recent example in marketing
is “service-dominant logic” proposed by Vargo and Lusch in the Journal of
Marketing in 2004 and cited many hundreds of times since then.  Many of
their subsequent papers repeat and explain the 8 (and later 10)
foundational principles of SD-logic.  Whether or not one is fully persuaded
by their overall approach, the fact that the core of the approach was
repeated in many different publications is an important part of making it
influential. Accusations of self-plagiarism might have prevented Vargo and
Lusch from being effective in promoting ideas that many in the marketing
discipline found interesting or at least worth discussing.  The IS
discipline also has many examples that might be judged academic
misdemeanors if we are not careful about the definition of self-plagiarism.
The original proponents of relational databases, entity relationship
diagrams, UML, soft systems methodology, structuration theory,
actor-network theory, service science, business process management, design
science research, balanced scorecard, etc., etc. would probably be viewed
as guilty of such academic misdemeanors. In those cases and many others,
the development and extension of knowledge would have been undermined and
restricted by punishing those authors for repeating their own carefully
constructed expressions of core ideas from their previous publications.


** Personal case study:  My paper in the proceedings of ICIS 2011
synthesized aspects of a previous ICIS paper about a metamodel and a number
of other papers related to service and service systems.  The new paper
surely re-used or slightly modified sentences or possibly paragraphs from
the previous papers because those papers explained the ideas as well as I
could explain them. Fearlessly risking accusations of self-plagiarism, I
avoided self-citation in a number of places because I thought self-citation
would be pretentious and ridiculous and because it would have contradicted
explicit instructions about not revealing the identity of the author in an
original submission. On the other hand, the new paper included an updated
version of a diagram that it cited appropriately as appearing in the
previous ICIS paper. Analogous to the question of the percentage of
recycled material in a manufactured product, I would guess that 30% - 60%
of the paper was recycled, an estimate that is of little consequence
because my goal was to synthesize and extend previous work. The important
issues for contributing to knowledge were: 1) whether the new paper itself
had enough completeness and integrity to be understood without requiring
the reader to study a bunch of other articles and 2) whether the new paper
had enough value beyond the value of the previous work to be worthy of
presentation at the conference. Let’s assume that a self-plagiarism task
force considers accusing me of self-plagiarism because certain sentences
and paragraphs in the new paper seem suspiciously similar to existing
summaries of the previously existing ideas that were being synthesized and
extended. What would be the basis for deciding whether I should be punished
for repeating myself or congratulated for extending previous work into new
areas with substantial value?


** Diverse interests of important stakeholders. The AIS approach for
dealing with attempts at double-dipping (which is the real problem) should
contain an explicit statement about resolving inherent conflicts between
the following stakeholder interests, all of which are legitimate:


1. Value for society:  This is the primary goal of research (according to a
comment by C. West Churchman).  That goal is best served by making it as
easy as possible to create and extend knowledge, implying that appropriate
personal re-use of previous research and publications should be encouraged
(not discouraged), and that  research results should be made available as
soon as possible (consistent with appropriate review processes). When we
actually define double-dipping or whatever term we want to use, we should
avoid creating unnecessary obstacles for researchers trying to extend their
own previous research. Specifically, concerns about double-dipping should
not create unintended punishments for attempting to extend research about
theories, concepts, examples, or data that appeared in a researcher's
previous publications.


2. Career ambitions: Individual researchers need to publish in order to
meet personal career goals.  They also need to promote their own work if
they care about its impact and value to society. Researchers may be tempted
to double-dip in order to satisfy either of those ambitions. AIS policies
should encourage career ambitions and should discourage double dipping.


3. Researcher needs for discussion, feedback, and inspiration:  Even
researchers in large research groups need the ability to disseminate
working papers and to obtain feedback at workshops and conferences without
being accused of double-dipping if they later submit new versions of
working papers and conference papers to journals. Journals should provide
guidelines about their expectations and should make it easy for the
researchers to explain whether their submissions are consistent with those
guidelines. Here is an example of guidelines that might be used by
hypothetical Journal X:

… Any previously distributed working paper or workshop paper that has not
been published in the proceedings of a major conference or published in a
journal can be submitted to Journal X with or without revision. The
specific conferences that are considered major conferences include ICIS,
ECIS, AMCIS, and PACIS.

… Any paper published in the proceedings of a major conference can be
submitted to Journal X after being extended by at least 30%. The author
must explain the nature of the extension of the previous paper.

… Any material from the researcher’s previous publications can be included
in a submission to Journal X provided that there is no copyright
infringement and provided that the new submission is a significant
contribution to knowledge (e.g., at least 30% of it is new).


4. Researcher needs to work efficiently. Researchers who build on their own
prior work should not drive themselves crazy by being forced to re-write
and thereby fuzzify previously published explanations of concepts, theory,
examples, and data analysis.  Avoiding "self-plagiarism" by changing
sentence order in well written paragraphs and word order in well-written
sentences from an author’s previous publications is just plain ridiculous
if the goal of research is knowledge creation.


5.  Concerns of deans and provosts: Publication records should support the
need to evaluate a faculty member’s research contributions in areas that
deans, provosts, and peer review committees may not be familiar with.
Publication in prestigious journals and subsequent citations is a partial
indicator of research quality.  The number of publications is a partial
indicator of research productivity.


6.  Scarcity of good reviewers: Publication standards and expectations
should address efficiency concerns of journal editors-in-chief and senior
editors, especially as regards difficulty in obtaining enough time from
reviewers. We don’t want editors, SEs, and reviewers to waste time with
submissions that have already been published and that therefore do not meet
submission guidelines.


7.  Commercial interests of publishing firms:  From a commercial viewpoint,
publications in commercial journals and books are currently treated as
intellectual property that individuals and libraries can use only after
paying for access. In some cases this creates conflicts with the primary
goal of research, which is providing value to society. Sometimes it creates
strange situations in which researchers wonder whether they have the
authority to extend their own work without asking the permission of an
unknown employee of a publishing firm. Question:  While republishing an
entire paper or book chapter is obviously a copyright infringement, I
wonder whether publishing companies have ever gone to the trouble of
enforcing copyright on an author’s re-use of sentences, paragraphs,
examples, or self-created diagrams from their own previous publications.
Although I lack proof, it seems to me possible that self-repetition is
actually a non-problem in relation to practical concerns and genuine
copyright interests of publishing firms.


I hope the above contributes to a beneficial policy related to
self-plagiarism, double-dipping, or whatever we want to call it.


Steven Alter, Ph.D.
Professor of Information Systems
University of San Francisco
www.stevenalter.com




> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:09:45 +0100
> From: "Key Pousttchi" <key.pousttchi at wiwi.uni-augsburg.de>
> To: <aisworld at lists.aisnet.org>
> Subject: [AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"
> Message-ID:
>        <002901ccb7fd$c61f7120$525e5360$@pousttchi at wiwi.uni-augsburg.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I would like to draw the attention on a side aspect connected to Claudia's
> posting and much more relevant with Ned's points in mind: The wording issue
> with "self-plagiarism".
>
> The term "plagiarism" is a very sharp sword in public discussions (we just
> had a couple of cases in Germany, including a minister who had to resign).
> With calling two entirely different issues by similar names, we mix up
> relevance. It's just like insulting your spouse having stolen the dinner
> items in the supermarket versus just cooking the same thing as yesterday.
>
> The first one is unethical, the second one just needs clear rules (as
> Claudia pointed out). Thus, I would urge that we think about a different
> term for the second, e.g., something like "double-selling".
>
> Key
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
>
> Dr. Key Pousttchi
> Associate professor
> University of Augsburg
> 86135 Augsburg, Germany
>
> tel  +49 (821) 598-4434
> fax  +49 (821) 598-4432
> GSM? +49 (177) 6319508
>
> http://www.wi-mobile.org
> mailto:key.pousttchi at wi-mobile.de
> ___________________________________________________________
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:48:24 +0100
> From: G?ran Goldkuhl <goran.goldkuhl at liu.se>
> To: "aisworld at lists.aisnet.org" <aisworld at lists.aisnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"
> Message-ID:
>        <0972569A59A95A43A56F125BD15A1BFAD0A03F0EAB at MAILBOX.ad.liu.se>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
>
> I fully agree to this: We should not use the term ?self-plagiarism?. It is
> a contradiction in terms. I quote from Online Etymology Online:
>
> ?Plagiarism: 1620s, from L. plagiarius "kidnapper, seducer, plunderer,"
> used in the sense of "literary thief" by Martial, from plagium
> "kidnapping," from plaga "snare, net,"
>
> Self-plagiarism would mean stealing from yourself.
>
> Submitting the same paper to several targets is of course deceitful
> behaviour. However, the problem of re-using your own earlier material
> should be given more thoughtful considerations. We honour cumulative
> research building on earlier works, which of course should comprise your
> own work. Do we not think it is desirable to develop earlier ideas and as a
> consequence to include in this development own intellectual material that
> already have been exposed?
>
> To threat scholars with possible allegations of self-plagiarism could have
> consequences that scholars start with new things all over the time and not
> work with continual development and improvement of intellectual contents.
>
> G?ran Goldkuhl
> Professor information systems development
> Link?ping University
> Sweden
>
> ________________________________________
> Fr?n: aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org [aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org]
> för Key Pousttchi [key.pousttchi at wiwi.uni-augsburg.de]
> Skickat: den 11 december 2011 13:09
> Till: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
> ?mne: [AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"
>
> I would like to draw the attention on a side aspect connected to Claudia's
> posting and much more relevant with Ned's points in mind: The wording issue
> with "self-plagiarism".
>
> The term "plagiarism" is a very sharp sword in public discussions (we just
> had a couple of cases in Germany, including a minister who had to resign).
> With calling two entirely different issues by similar names, we mix up
> relevance. It's just like insulting your spouse having stolen the dinner
> items in the supermarket versus just cooking the same thing as yesterday.
>
> The first one is unethical, the second one just needs clear rules (as
> Claudia pointed out). Thus, I would urge that we think about a different
> term for the second, e.g., something like "double-selling".
>
> Key
>
>
>
www.stevenalter.com
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