Editorial: Self‐plagiarism is not a thing
Jeff Offutt · Software Testing Verification and Reliability · 2018
This issue contains two interesting papers that address deep and difficult problems in testing. Heterogeneous fault prediction with cost-sensitive domain adaptation, by Li, Jing, and Zhu, proposes a new approach to predicting faults that incorporates cost. (Recommended by Hyunsook Do.) Improving lazy abstraction for SCR specifications through constraint relaxation, by Degiovanni, Ponzio, Aguirre, and Frias, presents a technique that makes it possible to apply model-checking to requirements specifications that cover large input domains and that include nondeterminism. (Recommended by Shaoying Liu.) I've been ranting on ethics and plagiarism for awhile, both here and elsewhere 1, 2. I have been plagiarised 3, 4, I have been accused of plagiarising (although I did not!), and I deal with plagiarism cases regularly as reviewer and editor. I've also been asked to speak about ethics in publishing to PhD students and young faculty at my university. This is a short rant in the other direction—there is no such thing as self plagiarism! “Taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own” — Oxford Dictionary. “To use the words or ideas of another person as if they were your own words or ideas” — Merriam-Webster Dictionary. “an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own, as by not crediting the original author.” — Dictionary.com The definition of plagiarism makes it quite simple … copying from ourselves is not plagiarism. We are not using “someone else's” work, we are using our own. There could be a copyright problem, depending on who owns the copyright for the paper. But that's very different from plagiarism and not usually something reviewers should be concerned with. There is not much grey area on this topic, but I did find one. I will avoid using names, and just use initials. ‘A' & ‘O' wrote a paper together. O then reused a related work paragraph in another paper with another co-author, ‘L.’ Later, L reused the same paragraph in a draft of a single-author paper. Despite a long talk, A and O could not decide if that secondary reuse amounted to “transitive plagiarism.” Clearly, L had not written the paragraph originally, but by reusing it in a paper with L, O had in some sense given credit to L for the paragraph. In the end, we decided to avoid risk and had L rewrite the questionable paragraph. Back to the original question, we are certainly allowed to reuse our own words. So let's all say this one last time together: “self-plagiarism.” Now, please, never say it again. It's not a thing. Now let's get back to the real issue: is the research sound?