GEEKALEGAL: SELF PLAGIARISM

Self Plagiarism? Who knew right? And how the heck do you plagiarize yourself? I read an article about it this last week so went into research mode.

This seems to be the new buzz word in the copyright news. Everyone from a professor who ran for public office to a reporter for a prestigious magazine are being hit with accusations of self plagiarism.

So of course I had to look into it. This issue stemmed from the annals of academia and journal reporting. An author of a non-fiction work would use significant portions of an article he'd written before, and with little changes in a “newer” work. Rather than revamping, and providing new material and expression, the author basically is, to be blunt, lazy, and just uses what they've already written in a new article.

This is not the same as building on prior research with new data or findings, but really just using what the author has already written. And people have been doing this for some time. However, as with most things, the internet and media have made it easier to discover these foibles, and the spotlight is turned on to put these authors to shame. The political motivation is an easy one to see. I gather that finding a well paid journalist who didn't bother to rework an article written for another publication, while being paid well at the present one, didn't sit well at all.

There is the argument that it is impossible to plagiarize oneself. It is however cheating, often selling or using an article for some sort of gain. In the academic arena of publish or perish, it is a good way to boost the resume. In the public world, it is a bit of fraud to many. But is it plagiarism? If the author owns the copyright then it is even a bit more problematic. Often journals will own the copyright upon publication, as transferred to them via contract by the author.

It may be difficult to plagiarize oneself but even so, it is probably the best description for the underlying fraud that is perpetuated on the public and readership in most cases. But does that mean I can't use material I've written say, in this blog, for a journal article some day? It really means that if I want to do the same subject, I'm probably better off recapping briefly and then moving to a substantially new article with some new ideas, and viewpoints, that offers a different cut on the subject matter.

It is a slippery slope. If you, as an author, write for a variety of publications about character development, then if you use the same article for one venue and then publish it in another, you run the risk of someone calling foul. No matter that it is YOUR material, it seems to hinge on that nebulous quality of what is “right”. Neither of the two individuals that were described above have lost their jobs, yet. But for the wanna-be politician, it hurt her campaign and the owner of the journal made it clear publicly that they were not pleased. The public shaming is going to hurt, right or wrong, even if not based on law.

There are a lot of software programs that look for plagiarism, so if someone wants to go after folks, not that hard to do these days. But does this mean your fiction works are under the same burden?

Let's think about the basics of copyright. It has to be original expression, with a minimal of creativity per the cases, as expressed in a fixed medium. This means that when you copy your former owned copyrighted material, you would be self plagiarizing. I think that the issue again is not as much legal as the expectations of your readers. They are not buying a book to read what you wrote, with just a minimal amount of changes or additions, five years ago. They are buying a new book and want to read it now. If you take a short story, again one where you own the copyright, it is a bit different. But be careful to check before you move forward. Most anthologies of short stories and journals own or keep the copyright for a significant period. Be careful, and make sure the new work is significantly and substantially new. That way you don't have to worry about complaints from the peanut gallery, or worse, a loss of readership.

It should be interesting to see where this goes legally. For now it would appear to be much more about the appearance of impropriety than the legal issues, but I suspect we'll see some case on that soon enough.

Did this seem as clear as mud? Actually it makes sense, particularly when one views it as cheating in some shape or form. Not all self plagiarism is bad or even wrong, but when someone offers it as a new article then it really should be new, and not a cut and paste.

See you next time, until then, I'm doing a lot of geeky things this month, some are even legal!