In my case I looked up the equation for calculating angular momentum and wrote it in action script. I had to truncate pi to like 10 digits, tho. So I guess I plagerized it from my physics book?
I dunno he was a nice guy but that memory sticks with me, he was really upset about it for some reason.
One of the classes I took as a senior in college was Genetics. It was a freshmen biology class. It was weird taking a class with Freshmen after being in college for so long. But I remember the professor purposely gave us a simple homework assignment: A definition.
So as I usually did, I looked up the definition in the book and submitted it, as did most of the class. And the teacher gave us all Fs. The objective was to teach us all a lesson about Plagiarism in Science. We took the definition of something out of a book, and we didn’t cite our sources, so therefore we plagiarized, and if we did it again, we would be expected to be brought in front of the University Board for it too.
It was a weird lesson to learn as a senior. None of my other classes had ever made the point that just using your assigned textbook for the course without citation was plagiarism. I felt at the time that it was very unfair, but in retrospect, I admire his method for driving the point home.
It’s weird how little education is given on this topic.
By way of the opposite story, I know people who have been accused of plagiarism for including copied paragraphs from their own work or earlier papers.
There was one time I had to cite a published article I wrote, and that just felt weird.
Rightly accused. That’s plagiarism if it’s not cited.
I’m not sure where you got this idea from! Plagiarism is about passing off someone else’s work as your own. That’s why plagiarism is so bad.
If you wrote something yourself, you can do whatever you want with it. There might be other accusations levelled at you for doing so - laziness or repetition, perhaps! - but hardly plagiarism.
My wife teaches HS English and runs into this self-plagiarism sometimes. For example, a student writes a paper for another class, then uses the same paper or paragraphs from it for an assignment in my wife’s class without citing it. The student is plagiarizing his/her own work from the other class and it’s a serious issue.
Why is that a serious issue?
Yeah, I don’t see someone using what they wrote as an issue.
The whole idea of plagiarism is that it’s bad to steal someone else’s work and claim it as your own.
By definition:
the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own
You can’t self-plagiarize. It is by definition impossible, because you are yourself, not someone else.
I think it’s fair to make this argument, but it’s also fair to say ‘we know what someone means’ when they say self-plagiarism.
But like you say, I can’t understand is why such a practice is an issue in itself. There might be contextual aspects - it might look lazy, or involve breaching copyright if you have sold the copyright of your work to a publisher, for instance - but in terms of academic integrity (which is the reason plagiarism is frowned upon), there’s obviously no case here.
Yeah if it’s copyrighted and you don’t own said rights I can see it. But that’s the only scenario that remotely makes sense. You can’t steal from yourself. If I walk into your house and take a quarter, that’s theft. If I reach into my pocket and take a quarter only a person with no concept of reality would claim I stole it.
The term itself might be off or incorrect but the action (using all or portions of your previous work without citing it) is still dishonest and isn’t acceptable in schools.
Why? It’s your fucking work. You did it already. There is nothing remotely dishonest about it.
Every speaker in the history of the world has done it a hundred times.
Jesus dude, feel free to do it then.
I’m saying that there is no internal logic. None. If you don’t want to discuss it, that’s fine, but I can’t even see where that position can be held for a rational human being, much less a group of them (and it would take a group to make it a rule at an institution).
Number 2 on the list - I assume an Ivy League school is a relatively rational group.
Because intellectual integrity is the hallmark of educational institutions, academic dishonesty is one of the most serious offenses that a student can commit at Columbia. It may be punishable by suspension or dismissal from the School of General Studies.
Academic dishonesty includes but is not limited to the following:
Plagiarism: Failure to cite or otherwise acknowledge ideas or phrases used in any paper, exercise, or project submitted in a course but gained from another source, such as a published text, another person’s work, or materials on the Web.
Self-plagiarism: The submission of one piece of work in more than one course without the explicit permission of the instructors involved.
etc.
The internal logic I use is, “If in doubt, cite it.” The worst case is the prof didn’t need it. I also sometimes cite the article in case the reader wants to go back and get the whole context, they can.
I rarely link to my own blogs posts, or if I do, I just footnote them. I don’t cite my own work often, and I forget the reason. I might have had a quote from a source in the article I wanted to use or something.
I think it’s not about plagiarism (i.e. deception) in such cases. Reusing old work doesn’t help a student learn new concepts or rethink familiar ones. That’s a solid argument that students shouldn’t be handing in the same essay for multiple classes.
But that’s about academic laziness, not ethics and integrity. Citing their essay won’t resolve any of the problems.
Also one thing I forgot to mention: I used to be freelance writer. So I’m not citing old essays. In this case, they were articles I wrote that might have had a source quote I also wanted to use in the paper.
I could have cited the interview, since I still own those notes, but either I didn’t have them, or I wanted to make it clear it was an article I wrote.
The “one piece of work” is significant here, I think.
I used to teach a World Politics course that had a lot of natural overlap with the department’s foundation International Relations Theory course. Knowing both syllabi, I could often tell when a student had worked material from a theory essay into one of their essays for me. And when it strengthened or broadened their work—when it showed they were critically engaged, in other words—I was AOK with it. Hell, I usually approved!
I’d also get students lazily passing off whole essays from wherever the hell, and those I’d bounce.
Regular plagiarism is by far the more serious problem.