When is “self-plagiarism” okay? New guidelines provide researchers with rules for recycling text | science

Although researchers often have valid reasons for using already published texts and reusing them in new publications, colleagues disapprove of such re-uses as “self-plagiarism”. But when Cary Moskovitz of Duke University, who is studying writing, looked for instructions for his students on self-plagiarism, he was left with nothing.

“There was almost no real research in the field,” he says. The scientists hadn’t really studied how often researchers recycle their texts, whether this reuse constitutes copyright infringement, or what types of reuse the researchers believe is right or wrong. So Moskovitz set about filling the void. Today is his Text Recycling Research Project (TRRP) released instructions for editors and writers, describes when the practice is both ethical and legal and how to transparently present reused text.

The guidelines make sense of these issues in terms other than self-plagiarism, says Lisa Rasmussen, research ethicist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. “Focusing too much on self-plagiarism creates a problem,” she says. For example, some researchers who have worked on a particular topic for decades may use very similar methods from one study to the next, which makes it efficient to simply cut and paste the method sections of their work. “We shouldn’t get them to torture their words just so they don’t get caught in a plagiarism detection software system,” as many magazine editors do, she says.

Text recycling is “general, if not omnipresent,” says Moskovitz. Using funds from the US National Science Foundation, he and a colleague analyzed 400 recently published technical articles, created an algorithm that calculated how similar sentences were in multiple articles from the same grant, and checked the results with human programmers. you found an average of three Phrases per item that were either fully recycled or had significant recycled phrases. However, it was unusual to see an entire block of text that was identical across multiple papers.

Moskovitz noted that even the limited guidelines available on text reuse failed to answer some important ethical questions, such as how to deal with text that is recycled in two papers with only partially overlapping authorship. On other important points, the advice was mixed and there seemed to be no factual basis. And while the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) describes some cases where text recycling is acceptable, these guidelines are meant for editors rather than researchers, says Moskovitz.

The legal questions are also significant, says Moskovitz: In a Editorial survey At top journals in all disciplines, he and his staff found that due to concerns about copyright infringement, editors often ask researchers to rephrase texts – since publishers are usually more likely than researchers to own the copyright in question. But the editors were unsure when a reformulation was legally necessary. Often, however, according to the TRRP guidelines, this reformulation is not required from a legal point of view, as there are good reasons to believe that it falls under the category of “fair use” in US copyright law. (Moskovitz says he is not aware of any lawsuits from publishers over text recycling.)

To provide more detailed guidance, Moskovitz and colleagues wanted to build on the advice of magazine publishers and other specialists, including COPE. The resulting recommendations differentiate between different types of text recycling – such as the reuse of text from unpublished work such as a funding application or the repetition of the description of a method in several published work. And they suggest that recycling text appropriately can help communicate ideas accurately. Reformulations may be less ethical than recycling, according to guidelines, as they obscure the fact that material has been reused. However, the guide does not recommend using text recycling to publish the same work in multiple places – for example, making small changes to a published article and submitting it elsewhere.

Evan Kharasch, anesthetist at Duke and editor-in-chief of Anesthesiologywho was not involved in the TRRP project, recently headed the magazine first editorial policy on text recycling based on the guidelines of TRRP. When authors describe standard methods or protocols, the journal now allows them to use text that is identical or “substantially equivalent” to previous publications, as long as they cite the original source. “It seemed appropriate to allow people to use their best description of what they did,” he says, even though it was previously published. Clarifying what constitutes legitimate text recycling “helps to draw a better line against plagiarism,” says Kharasch.

Rasmussen hopes the TRRP guide will help editors focus their focus on aspects of text reuse that are most likely to protect the integrity of research. Merely marking repetitive text with plagiarism detection software does not really guarantee integrity, determines it, and can lead to unnecessary work and possible loss of clarity. This means that “nothing is achieved that really contributes to the integrity of research,” says Rasmussen.

Moskovitz hopes the TRRP guidelines will help people better understand the scope of text recycling and reach consensus on when to do so ethically. “Scientific research is inherently gradual,” he says. “People talk about standing on the shoulders of giants, but in a way, people are standing on their own shoulders.”

* Clarification, June 25th, 12 noon: Updated this article to indicate that the mention of “fair use” referred to US copyright law.