On Recycling Our Own Work in the Digital Age

The concept of self-plagiarism has been typically examined as a type of research and/or writing malpractice often associated with forms of publication misconduct, such as duplicate publication and “salami publication.” In these and related transgressions, previously published text, data, or other intellectual content is misrepresented as new material in subsequent publications. These forms of inappropriate reuse will be explored in the context of traditional publication domains, such as journal articles, as well as in other domains of research and scholarship not often addressed by the existing publication ethics literature. The chapter’s discussion of recycling our previously published content is grounded in the notion that authors of scientific and scholarly material enter into an implicit contract with their readers in which readers’ expectations are that, unless otherwise noted, such works are accurate, original to the author/s, and not previously disseminated in a formal manner. Accuracy in science and in scholarship is always a given. However, as researchers and academics often rely on the work of others, authors have an ethical responsibility to alert readers as to when content (e.g., ideas, text, data) are the authors’ own and when they are derived from others’ work. Failure to do so could lead to a charge of plagiarism. Similarly, as previously disseminated content may be re-examined and/or reused, readers should always be informed as to its correct provenance. Previously disseminated content that is reused and presented as if it were new may be construed as an instance of self-plagiarism and, in the case of covertly recycled data, possibly rise to the level of research misconduct.