Follow me on Mastodon:
@adcoleman@hcommons.social
 
 
|
I view the term “self-plagiarism” as an oxymoron, and a misnomer. It denotes the commission of an intellectual crime, and indeed a legal one, as well as an ethical breach, where an author most likely has committed none of those offenses. Use of it as a blanket term to paint any and all such repurposing as acts of bad faith that somehow cheat editors, publishers, readers, and one’s fellow professionals only brands the accusers as self-righteous know-nothings while demonstrating a deeply unprofessional failure to research standard practices in the field. […]
Writers, musicians, visual artists, choreographers, and other “content providers” regularly return to, reconsider, revise, borrow from, and otherwise cannibalize their previous output. No one even marginally literate in the arts can claim unawareness of the copious evidence of this as common practice. So I challenge the concept of “self-plagiarism,” an oxymoron because plagiarism involves taking material you haven’t created and claiming it as your own. You can engage in self-parody, consciously or not; you can repeat yourself, consciously or not; but you can’t plagiarize yourself. […]
|
SPJ Research Award 2014
Thought for the Day Ignorance is a condition; dumbness is a commitment.
Copyright Notice All content of this publication is © copyright 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 by A. D. Coleman unless otherwise noted. All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced for commercial purposes without prior written permission. All photos copyright by the individual photographers. "Fair use" allows quotation of excerpts of textual material from this site for educational and other noncommercial purposes.
Published by Flying Dragon LLC.
Neither A. D. Coleman nor Flying Dragon LLC are responsible for the content of external Internet sites to which this blog links.
|
Self-Plagiarism: Oxymoron Invasion (2)
I view the term “self-plagiarism” as an oxymoron, and a misnomer. It denotes the commission of an intellectual crime, and indeed a legal one, as well as an ethical breach, where an author most likely has committed none of those offenses. Use of it as a blanket term to paint any and all such repurposing as acts of bad faith that somehow cheat editors, publishers, readers, and one’s fellow professionals only brands the accusers as self-righteous know-nothings while demonstrating a deeply unprofessional failure to research standard practices in the field. […]