Ethics

What's wrong with "self-plagiarism"?

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In self-plagiarism you copy your own work from one already published venue to a new venue, and then try to publish it again without acknowledging where you took it from. It is misleads people, in the first place because it violates the standard academic convention to cite text that has previously appeared (even if it is your own text). People need to know where a text first appeared in order to trace such things as critiques by others. Secondly, it misleads about the quantity of your publications; in academics we often take number of publications as a rough guide to productivity, but if publications overlap, then there is less productivity than there appears. Self-plagiarism is therefore viewed as a kind of dishonesty.

Great question! At first blush, "self-plagiarism" seems absurd, like forging one's own signature or stealing from oneself. But just as we can imagine odd circumstances when even these other seemingly absurd cases might be attempted (imagine I have amnesia and forgotten I am Charles Taliaferro, and think, instead, my real name is John Doe; I go to a bank and pretend to be Charles Taliaferro and sign a check with that name, I then break into Charles Taliaferro's apartment, take everything and sell it on the black market using the name John Doe).

On inspection,though, self-plagiarism is actually less odd than the strange adventures of John Doe. It usually consists in re-using work you have published elsewhere and raises copy-right concerns. Self-plagiarism occurs when, say, you have an essay published in The Journal of Philosophy but then use 90% of the article to form a new essay with a new title in a book, say, published by Princeton University Press without crediting the original publisher or paying any copyright fees. While extensive re-using of one's own writing published elsewhere (without citations or paying fees) is illegal or in breach of contract, it is often more frowned upon than subject to legal action. In fact, it is very difficult not to repeat points you have made elsewhere if you are advancing the same argument in multiple contexts, and this can easily lead to using the same language. For example, the prominent philosopher Alvin Plantinga has advanced an important argument that naturalism is self-refuting in many different debates, conferences, anthologies, journal articles, books. Though I have not checked on this, I think it is highly unlikely that there is not some repeating of phrases and language, and this is neither undesirable (imagine he had to change the terms of his argument on each occasion!) or dishonorable (in fact, it might be more honorable and helpful to both his critics and supporters if there was some constancy of language in these multiple publications).

NB: I must add that I am NOT claiming Plantinga either has done the above or is guilty of self-plagiarism, I use his case as a hypothetical one of a highly respected philosopher who has advanced a substantial position (which I happen to think is convincing) in more than one publication.

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