[AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"

[Roger Clarke]

At 16:42 -0500 14/12/11, Chitu Okoli wrote:
>I would like to directly address Roger Clarke's definition of 
>"self-plagiarism": "'the re-presentation of the documented words or 
>ideas of oneself, without appropriate attribution". While I respect 
>that the underlying issue for which he is concerned is the real and 
>serious issue of multiple submission, I strongly deny that there is 
>any ethical obligation to cite yourself when only small portions are 
>reused. (I consider up to several paragraphs to be a "small 
>portion".)

That aspect is dealt with at length in the segment I posted earlier:
http://www.rogerclarke.com/SOS/SCSP-09.html#RTFToC10

It needs careful expression to get it right, but, roughly speaking, 
we're in violent agreement.


>  ... [the term] "self-plagiarism" ... can serve no purpose but to 
>demonize innocent scholars, as Ned Kock alerted us to, and should 
>certainly not appear in our professional policies such as the AIS 
>Code of Ethics.

I don't believe anyone is defending the term 'self-plagiarism'.

The reason the term appears in the AIS Code is that it's in wide use 
across all disciplines, and throughout the (small) literature on the 
topic.

Evidence of that is the articles you cited, and the additional couple 
cited in my CAIS paper, bibliog. below.

And note that the sole mention in the AIS Code is this:  "Unimproved 
re-publication of one's own work is sometimes referred to by the 
expression 'self-plagiarism', and should be avoided".

(Maybe the Code should be amended to indicate that the term 
'self-plagiarism' is deprecated?).


Bibliography

AIS (2003) 'Code of Research Conduct' Association for Information 
Systems, September 2003, at 
http://home.aisnet.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=15

Clarke R. (2009)  'Self-Plagiarism and Self-Citation:  A Practical 
Guide Based on Underlying Principles'  Commun. AIS 25 Article 19 
(July 2009) 155-164, Special Section on Journal Self-Citation, 
PrePrint at http://www.rogerclarke.com/SOS/SCSP-09.html

Collberg C. & Kobourov S. (2005) 'Self-Plagiarism in Computer 
Science' Commun. ACM 48, 4 (April 2005) 88-94

Hexham I. (1992) 'On Plagiarism and Integrity in Scholarly Activity' 
Humanist: Humanities Computing 5, 4 (3 April 1992), at 
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~hexham/study/plag.html

Roig M. (2006) 'Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other 
questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing' St John's 
University NY, 2006, at http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~roigm/plagiarism/

Samuelson P. (1994) 'Self-Plagiarism or Fair Use?' Commun. ACM 37, 8 
(August 1994) 21-25


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University