Self-Plagarism

[cupcakelyfe]

I'm currently retaking an online course I failed last semester, only due to the fact that I turned in all of my assignments in the last week, and the late penalties caused my grade to plummet. I'm in the final week of that same course, and burnt out from redoing all of the work from scratch. I've changed up all of my assignments so far (instead of doing Option A, I've done Option B, etc), but I need a break.

If it is my own work, for the same exact class, is it possible to plagiarize myself?

If re-using my own work for the same exact class is not okay, can I paraphrase myself and still use the same work, only revised?

TIA!

 

[JoJo]

My gut instinct is no, it is not plagiarism since it's still your own work, just content you wrote earlier rather than this year.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I don't think your professor/teacher would appreciate that very much, but no it's not actual plagiarism

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

Speaking as a college instructor, under normal circumstances your teacher should not accept the work. The standing policy for most institutions is that each class requires the student to submit original and new work. Submitting papers that were already submitted to another course (or even the same course if you are retaking it) is cause for rejecting the paper. Sorry.

However, in my experience most instructors are fairly reasonable people [footnote]That could, of course, merely be a self-delusional conceit on my part[/footnote]. You should contact the instructor and talk it over with them. While they probably won't accept the older work, they are likely to accept you using the same topic with a different spin, and thus a rewritten paper to make it new material. You would thus be able to use the older research, complemented with some new of course, and save yourself a some time while still submitting new work.

If you submitted the original work online, then most plagiarism search engines, like TurnItIn.com will flag the material as stolen.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

In terms of academia? Fairly certain that counts as plagiarism.

But in my personal opinion, I would do it, so long as it isn't the same Prof. I mean what are the chances they're going to bother to check? Especially since it's your own work anyway, it's totally going to have your writing voice.

But if you do that, you assume the risks of course. It probably be easier to just do the assignment then trying to edit your work to make sure it fits whatever requirements

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Speaking as a college instructor, under normal circumstances your teacher should not accept the work. The standing policy for most institutions is that each class requires the student to submit original and new work. Submitting papers that were already submitted to another course (or even the same course if you are retaking it) is cause for rejecting the paper. Sorry.

However, in my experience most instructors are fairly reasonable people [footnote]That could, of course, merely be a self-delusional conceit on my part[/footnote]. You should contact the instructor and talk it over with them. While they probably won't accept the older work, they are likely to accept you using the same topic with a different spin, and thus a rewritten paper to make it new material. You would thus be able to use the older research, complemented with some new of course, and save yourself a some time while still submitting new work.

If you submitted the original work online, then most plagiarism search engines, like TurnItIn.com will flag the material as stolen.

Hows that website work, man?

So my college work could be in some database without my permission?

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

If you submitted the original work online, then most plagiarism search engines, like TurnItIn.com will flag the material as stolen.

Hows that website work, man?

So my college work could be in some database without my permission?

It works like a drop-box for turning in papers. When the paper passes through the system, the server searches for matches and gives the instructor a break-down on how much of the paper's phrasing appears elsewhere. It does check against any papers submitted via the system, but any stored material is kept confidential. In principle, it's not much different in storing information than your email server which keeps your emails for a period of time.

Ironically enough, that particular system of checking for plagiarism is nearly worthless when it comes to scientific papers, especially in chemistry and physics. Turns out there's only so many ways to scientifically state certain ideas and the papers all come up 80%+ matches.

 

[DoPo]

So my college work could be in some database without my permission?

Technically, that's work you've done for the institution. Or at least, it might be - you have to check how your university handles those. That was the case in mine, and before I finished, we started talking of changing it. I mean, us from the compsci department, plus the department leads started talking to the appropriate university representatives. I don't know how that finished, but I believe everybody was on board....it was all just bogged down in bureaucracy, so things were moving slowly.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

In a legal sense you can't actually plagiarize yourself (I believe). However arguing the finer points of copyright law with your professor is highly unlikely to convince anyone. Save yourself the trouble and just redo the assignments.

 

[DoPo]

In a legal sense you can't actually plagiarize yourself (I believe). However arguing the finer points of copyright law with your professor is highly unlikely to convince anyone. Save yourself the trouble and just redo the assignments.

Sure, you can't really plagiarise yourself, however, if it's the regulation that you shouldn't just resubmit the same work, then no amount of legal arguing would change that.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

If it is my own work, for the same exact class, is it possible to plagiarize myself?

If your Professor didn't tell you, the answer is YES.
You will be in trouble if you use your own work again.

If re-using my own work for the same exact class is not okay, can I paraphrase myself and still use the same work, only revised?

I don't exactly know why, but paraphrasing makes thing OK to certain extent.

 

[Colour Scientist]

It's usually considered a big no-no.

If you've already failed the class once, I wouldnt risk it.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

It's generally not a good idea. It's like submitting the same art piece to a festival award competition time and again, with no change or alteration. That and I'm unsure if your university course has 'Participation' grade (usually 10-20%), but that will probably be stricken by the lack of reinterpretive examination of the course materials and concepts within.

That and it's kind of rude to the marker and course co-ordinators. It's like; "Fuck it ... I didn't even bother to try. You understand, right?"

 

[Nickolai77]

Seems like you're getting a lot of contrary suggestions here.

If in doubt I'd check with your course conveyor- But so long as you're not copying your old content then you're probably okay. It should be absolutely fine to use your old sources, but I would significantly re-phrase your content so it would count as being original.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

So my college work could be in some database without my permission?

Technically, that's work you've done for the institution. Or at least, it might be - you have to check how your university handles those. That was the case in mine, and before I finished, we started talking of changing it. I mean, us from the compsci department, plus the department leads started talking to the appropriate university representatives. I don't know how that finished, but I believe everybody was on board....it was all just bogged down in bureaucracy, so things were moving slowly.

I'm rather bothered by this. I was an English major, and many of those papers are like little pieces of art work. I'm disturbed by the idea that the piece of shit college I graduated from somehow has ownership of them.

I certainly wouldn't condone them being put into any database for plagiarism either.

 

[kris40k]

In my college experience, yes, you would be committing self-plagiarism and would not only get failed, but quite possibly academically punished depending on how much you pissed off the instructor. Now, I have had somewhat similar circumstances, and have in fact referenced parts of my previous work in later work. But no, if you submitted something before, and you try to submit it again, you will likely lose badly.

 

[FalloutJack]

Self-plagarism is not possible. You wrote it. I had a course I didn't do very well in (because the professor was a complete hack) and I retook the course to get a better grade. I used an UNALTERED copy of a paper that didn't do well the first time and it passed with the next professor.

 

[LaoJim]

I'm a little confused. At the MA that I finished last year the rules were

1. If you failed a course you would receive help from the tutors to improve the essay you had submitted to a passing level. Only if the essay is a complete non-started would you be asked to resubmit it.
2. If you submitted late you would lose 5 marks (of 100) each working day. If this caused the essay to fail even though it was of a passing standard you wouldn't have to resubmit it, but the lower late mark would be the one entered into your record and submitting work late would serious scupper your chances of getting a merit or distinction.

With these rules self-plagarism is not possible within the same course (as you are only writing one assignment) but reusing earlier material or writing on a similar topic in different courses is not okay.

Making you completely rewrite assignments that you have already submitted (albeit late) seems a particularly cruel and unusual punishment.

Also, while I'm happy to answer, I'm not sure why you've created a profile, just to post this question here of all places. Ask your tutor or else ask someone else on the course.

So my college work could be in some database without my permission?

Technically, that's work you've done for the institution. Or at least, it might be - you have to check how your university handles those. That was the case in mine, and before I finished, we started talking of changing it. I mean, us from the compsci department, plus the department leads started talking to the appropriate university representatives. I don't know how that finished, but I believe everybody was on board....it was all just bogged down in bureaucracy, so things were moving slowly.

I'm rather bothered by this. I was an English major, and many of those papers are like little pieces of art work. I'm disturbed by the idea that the piece of shit college I graduated from somehow has ownership of them.

I certainly wouldn't condone them being put into any database for plagiarism either.

Check the paperwork you signed when you started the course. My understanding (based on British universities) is that you generally retain the moral ownership of the work, however in return for giving you a degree the university demands certain rights over the work. Chiefly they can make available the work freely available to the public (I don't think they can/do charge for it) with you still identified as the author of course. They tend to do this for all PhD thesis, the better MA dissertations, and not at all for BA level work or lower. This is not unreasonable, the university needs to be able to demonstrate that the quality of the students to whom it is conferring degrees and at higher levels the work is supposed to be for the betterment of man-kind. As far as I'm aware (IANAL) you retain all other rights of ownership over the work, you can publish it or include it other works you write. (Though academic practice is to acknowledge the origin of the material, again this seems reasonable, especially if you've received help from a tutor.) Now even if they don't make it freely available they also have the right to keep it on file and to let other universities look at it, which universities may want to do in cases of suspected plagiarism. The TurnItIn system is an extension of this right. The speed of modern computing allows all universities to check all papers in an instant. Tutors can then follow up any similarities the computer discovers. I guess you can argue that this is the equivalent of having CCTV cameras on every corner, or the police stopping every driver on a road without probable cause. Or you can argue that plagiarism is so rampant in higher education (and it really is) and the internet is so widely used by plagiarists that the universities are just levelling the playing field. Moreover you could make the case that, at least for government-funded institutions, that since the university now has the ability through the internet to make every piece of writing available done by every student available they should in fact do so.

(For CompScis I don't know if this all applies to code as well, in principle it should, though it gets a bit more fiddly because there can be serious profit to be made from code and I have a feeling that many institutions may have tried to muscle in and grab a piece of this. Again there is an argument that all code developed in a publicly funded university should automatically have an open source licence slapped on it)

 

[EvilRoy]

I'm currently retaking an online course I failed last semester, only due to the fact that I turned in all of my assignments in the last week, and the late penalties caused my grade to plummet. I'm in the final week of that same course, and burnt out from redoing all of the work from scratch. I've changed up all of my assignments so far (instead of doing Option A, I've done Option B, etc), but I need a break.

If it is my own work, for the same exact class, is it possible to plagiarize myself?

If re-using my own work for the same exact class is not okay, can I paraphrase myself and still use the same work, only revised?

TIA!

Uh, well per my education in ethics and plagarism as part of my profession, yes what you are doing would be considered self-plagarism. It is a thing and it is considered an ethical breach, which could lead to you being punished by your institution if they catch you.

That said, I don't know your situation at all so maybe it is considered acceptable by your university in this instance. The only thing you can really do is ask your professor how they feel about you partially re-using old work (make sure you say partial, no professor is going to accept you just re-turning in an old assignment.) Reproducing an old document you have written with an updated viewpoint would be another way to avoid accusations of self plagiarism while simultaneously avoiding substantial re-work.

The thing about the concept of self-plagiarism is that it was more or less made to keep people from getting double credit for this or that. That said, the kind of double credit people are worried about is getting multiple journal entries or accolades for the same piece of work - as in, we don't want a researcher/scientist producing the same paper over and over. It makes it harder for new research to be distinguished, and it lowers the general regard of academic work. The kind of double credit you're looking for does indeed fall under the umbrella, but nobody really cares about it. You aren't getting this into a distinguished academic journal a second time, and you aren't using the same paper twice to earn grant money a second time.

 

[kris40k]

Self-plagarism is not possible. You wrote it. I had a course I didn't do very well in (because the professor was a complete hack) and I retook the course to get a better grade. I used an UNALTERED copy of a paper that didn't do well the first time and it passed with the next professor.

Self-plagarism is very possible. You are essentially presenting the work a second time as if it is original work, which it is not. From an academic standpoint, this is unethical. The APA's stance on it is[footnote]https://library.peirce.edu/APA/whentocite[/footnote]:

What is self-plagiarism?

Per APA Rule 6.02 "Self-plagiarism refers to the practice of presenting one's own previously published work as though it were new" (p. 170).
"The core of the new document must constitute an original contribution to knowledge, and only the amount of previously published material necessary to understand that contribution should be included, primarily in the discussion of theory and methodology" (p. 16).

You can also find some discussion of self-plagarism in this whitepaper, The Ethics of Self-Plagarism [http://www.du.ac.in/du/uploads/research/06122014ithenticate-selfplagiarism.pdf], which also mentions that the subject is often still debated.

That in your experience, your professor either did not check, or did not catch, your self-plagarism does not mean that the actions you took are acceptable. Just you got lucky that time.

As far as my own opinion on the subject: don't be a slacker. Create an original work each time, but you can cite previous work to reuse some ideas just as you can any other source. Just don't copy yourself, same as any other source.