[AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"

[Dennis, Alan R.]

Let me commend Steve and Dennis for good points, and second them.


1.       Self-plagiarism should be dropped from our vocabulary.

2.       We should ensure there is no double publication of the same manuscript, but we should *encourage* journal publication of conference papers with disclosure of their provenance.  To go the way of management and only publish weaker papers or just abstracts at conferences seems a step backwards in this era of rapid knowledge creation.

3.       We should *encourage* the re-use portions of text from one's own manuscripts in other manuscripts for the same reasons we encourage systems developers to re-use portions of code from one program in another: object reuse is more efficient and reliable than writing new material, and it enables authors to spend time on higher-value activities than writing prose.


Alan


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Alan Dennis

Professor and John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems

Co-Director, Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics

Co-Founder and SVP for Research, Courseload Inc.

Publisher, MIS Quarterly Executive

Kelley School of Business, Indiana University

www.kelley.iu.edu/ardennis<http://www.kelley.iu.edu/ardennis>

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From: aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of Galletta, Dennis
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 10:23 PM
To: Steven Alter; aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"

Steve raised many good points. However, unlike Steve, I don't care what we settle on for a name; I am most concerned with policy. I hope we can settle on a reasonable policy, or conferences will fail to attract the best work of authors. If they do, however, continue to attract good work, then journals will have fewer papers submitted because of prohibitions we are discussing.

These policies are usually aimed at those "evildoers" who are trying to recycle their own work with little-to-no additional effort. However, let's focus for at least a few moments on what many of us have been taught as mainstream: those of us wishing to present at a conference first to gather comments for eventual journal publication. Editors of elite MIS journals have even expressed the desire to have submissions that are more "mature;" presentations at conferences were evidence of this maturity. Claudia raised this first and I've been waiting in vain to hear a "good news" answer to her question.

Further, in computer science, as Claudia stated, conference publications are counted as the most valuable publications. At my school, conference papers do not count at all. So if the conference is essentially going to become a dead end for many papers, what is the motivation for any of us to ever submit to another conference?

Let's be practical about this: Many of us do empirical work, presenting and testing research models. If our model and sample are reasonable, do we need to change them by 30% just to change them? Note that we also should be economical regarding participant time. Do we really need to gather 30% more data just to make a greater proportion of the paper unique or to make it sound 30% different?

We just had a couple hundred authors present papers at ICIS last week with only 5 minutes for questions and answers given space limitations at the convention center. Based on only a small number of comments, it will be difficult for many authors to generate 30% differentiation for submission to journals. In a case of my own, we received exactly two comments and one was just a question for clarification. So how are we supposed to come up with 30% new content under policy that did not exist before the conference?

So either we need to recognize conference publications or allow very similar versions of previously-accepted conference papers to be submitted to journals. I'm not arguing that we should have it both ways, but likewise, we should at least have it ONE way. Interestingly, those in HCI in the computer science/psychology area DO have it both ways-they have an elite publication but can still publish a full-length version in a journal. I'm speaking of the ACM SIG-CHI Conference, a top outlet for papers in Computer-Human Interaction, where the papers are commonly six-pagers and then published in full-length later in a top journal such as HCI or IJHCS.

The only way I can think of to resolve this is to return to the practice of only publishing abstracts or very short versions of ICIS papers. This will enable our conferences and journals to survive and provide a viable strategy for non-evildoers in the mainstream to do one or more local presentations then go to a conference, then move to journal submission.

It is likely that I speak for us all: I do not want to spend valuable time traveling to expensive conferences only to see second-rate presentations while authors save their best work for journal submission.

DG

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Dennis F. Galletta                      Professor of Business Administration
University of Pittsburgh                 and Director, Katz Doctoral Program
282a Mervis Hall                            Katz Graduate School of Business
Phone +1 412-648-1699                                  Pittsburgh, PA  15260
E-mail: galletta @                                       Fax +1 412-648-1693
        katz.pitt.edu                       homepage: www.pitt.edu/~galletta<http://www.pitt.edu/~galletta>
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From: aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org<mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org> [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of Steven Alter
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 7:53 PM
To: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org<mailto:aisworld at lists.aisnet.org>
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"

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