Since Amazon has seen fit to delay my Master’s course study books another two days (they are supposed to arrive today — unless I get another e-mail delaying them even further), I have fallen to reading the one book that has arrived: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition.
Now, in high school I had to use Kate L. Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. For undergraduate it was the MLA Handbook. At the newspaper it was the AP Stylebook. At the bank we don’t have a communications style guide.
On reading the APA guide for my graduate degree, I see that the book is focused on appropriate styles for research papers that are published in the research journals of the APA and other scientific and professional associations. Which makes me think that my Master’s program may have more of a research bent than a simple acquisition of knowledge. I believe there is a thesis I will need to put together at the end of the program, after all.
So I am reading the guide and I come across the below paragraph:
Chapter 1. Because of he importance of ethical issues that affect the conduct of scientific inquiry, we have placed ethics discussions in this opening chapter and have significantly expanded coverage of several topics. New guidance is included on determining authorship and terms of collaboration, duplicate publication, plagiarism and self-plagiarism, disguising of participants, validity of instrumentation, and making data available to others for verification (APA Publication Manual, sixth ed., p. 5).
Can anyone reading this paragraph guess what particular item caught my attention? I was riding in the car with Betsy driving, and I read it to her. She spotted the word — at least she asked me what was the word I said after the word right before it. She wasn’t sure she had caught it or not. So I turned to the back seat and asked Carly and Nathan to listen, and tell me what stood out of the paragraph to them. After I read it to them Nathan popped up with the answer — self-plagiarism.
We all had a laugh at that. So I continued reading, and got to Chapter One where it was described:
Self-plagiarism. Just as researchers do not present the work of others as their own (plagiarism), they do not present their own previously published work as new scholarship (self-plagiarism) (APA Publication Manual, sixth ed., p. 16)
I know in high school we understood plagiarism to be stealing other people’s work by representing it as one’s own. But apparently the emphasis of plagiarism isn’t on the stealing, but the misrepresentation. Because self-plagiarism isn’t about stealing from yourself, but about misrepresenting the source of your work. Authorship is important, not only the who, but the when and where.
Now, having been a reporter for six years, I understand the importance of crediting ones sources, and knowing their validity as well. First hand versus second or third hand information.I tend to give that sort of detail to people when sharing information. But this idea of self-plagiarism unfolds a whole other area of thought on the meaning of authorship and accreditation of sources. I know I will be using it for the next fer years, but I will also be contemplating it for those years and beyond.
At The Rainbow 