<div class="gmail_quote"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Here
is a bit more explanation:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">**</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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. <span class="apple-style-span">Most genuinely valuable research is cumulative in nature</span>.
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. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">** 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. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">**</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">**</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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). <span class="apple-style-span">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. </span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">…
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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">…
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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">…
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).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">I
hope the above contributes to a beneficial policy related to self-plagiarism,
double-dipping, or whatever we want to call it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Steven
Alter, Ph.D.<br>
Professor of Information Systems<br>
University of San Francisco<br>
</span><a href="http://www.stevenalter.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">www.stevenalter.com</span></a><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%"> </span></p></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">------------------------------<br>
<br>
Message: 4<br>
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:09:45 +0100<br>
From: "Key Pousttchi" <<a href="mailto:key.pousttchi@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de">key.pousttchi@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de</a>><br>
To: <<a href="mailto:aisworld@lists.aisnet.org">aisworld@lists.aisnet.org</a>><br>
Subject: [AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"<br>
Message-ID:<br>
<002901ccb7fd$c61f7120$525e5360$@<a href="mailto:pousttchi@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de">pousttchi@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de</a>><br>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<br>
<br>
I would like to draw the attention on a side aspect connected to Claudia's<br>
posting and much more relevant with Ned's points in mind: The wording issue<br>
with "self-plagiarism".<br>
<br>
The term "plagiarism" is a very sharp sword in public discussions (we just<br>
had a couple of cases in Germany, including a minister who had to resign).<br>
With calling two entirely different issues by similar names, we mix up<br>
relevance. It's just like insulting your spouse having stolen the dinner<br>
items in the supermarket versus just cooking the same thing as yesterday.<br>
<br>
The first one is unethical, the second one just needs clear rules (as<br>
Claudia pointed out). Thus, I would urge that we think about a different<br>
term for the second, e.g., something like "double-selling".<br>
<br>
Key<br>
<br>
<br>
___________________________________________________________<br>
<br>
Dr. Key Pousttchi<br>
Associate professor<br>
University of Augsburg<br>
86135 Augsburg, Germany<br>
<br>
tel +49 (821) 598-4434<br>
fax +49 (821) 598-4432<br>
GSM? +49 (177) 6319508<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.wi-mobile.org" target="_blank">http://www.wi-mobile.org</a><br>
mailto:<a href="mailto:key.pousttchi@wi-mobile.de">key.pousttchi@wi-mobile.de</a><br>
___________________________________________________________<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
------------------------------<br>
<br>
Message: 5<br>
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:48:24 +0100<br>
From: G?ran Goldkuhl <<a href="mailto:goran.goldkuhl@liu.se">goran.goldkuhl@liu.se</a>><br>
To: "<a href="mailto:aisworld@lists.aisnet.org">aisworld@lists.aisnet.org</a>" <<a href="mailto:aisworld@lists.aisnet.org">aisworld@lists.aisnet.org</a>><br>
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"<br>
Message-ID:<br>
<<a href="mailto:0972569A59A95A43A56F125BD15A1BFAD0A03F0EAB@MAILBOX.ad.liu.se">0972569A59A95A43A56F125BD15A1BFAD0A03F0EAB@MAILBOX.ad.liu.se</a>><br>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"<br>
<br>
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:<br>
<br>
?Plagiarism: 1620s, from L. plagiarius "kidnapper, seducer, plunderer," used in the sense of "literary thief" by Martial, from plagium "kidnapping," from plaga "snare, net,"<br>
<br>
Self-plagiarism would mean stealing from yourself.<br>
<br>
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?<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
G?ran Goldkuhl<br>
Professor information systems development<br>
Link?ping University<br>
Sweden<br>
<br>
________________________________________<br>
Fr?n: <a href="mailto:aisworld-bounces@lists.aisnet.org">aisworld-bounces@lists.aisnet.org</a> [<a href="mailto:aisworld-bounces@lists.aisnet.org">aisworld-bounces@lists.aisnet.org</a>] för Key Pousttchi [<a href="mailto:key.pousttchi@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de">key.pousttchi@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de</a>]<br>
Skickat: den 11 december 2011 13:09<br>
Till: <a href="mailto:aisworld@lists.aisnet.org">aisworld@lists.aisnet.org</a><br>
?mne: [AISWorld] Plagiarism and "Self-Plagiarism"<br>
<br>
I would like to draw the attention on a side aspect connected to Claudia's<br>
posting and much more relevant with Ned's points in mind: The wording issue<br>
with "self-plagiarism".<br>
<br>
The term "plagiarism" is a very sharp sword in public discussions (we just<br>
had a couple of cases in Germany, including a minister who had to resign).<br>
With calling two entirely different issues by similar names, we mix up<br>
relevance. It's just like insulting your spouse having stolen the dinner<br>
items in the supermarket versus just cooking the same thing as yesterday.<br>
<br>
The first one is unethical, the second one just needs clear rules (as<br>
Claudia pointed out). Thus, I would urge that we think about a different<br>
term for the second, e.g., something like "double-selling".<br>
<br>
Key<br>
<br>
<br></blockquote></div><br><a href="http://www.stevenalter.com">www.stevenalter.com</a><br>