Text Recycling in STEM Research: An Exploratory Investigation of Expert and Novice Beliefs and Attitudes

Cary Moskovitz Duke University ; Susanne Hall California Institute of Technology

Abstract

When writing journal articles, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) researchers produce a number of other genres such as grant proposals and conference posters, and their new articles routinely build directly on their own prior work. As a result, STEM authors often reuse material from their completed documents in producing new documents. While this practice, known as text recycling (or self-plagiarism), is a debated issue in publishing and research ethics, little is known about researchers’ beliefs about what constitutes appropriate practice. This article presents results of from an exploratory, survey-based study on beliefs and attitudes toward text recycling among STEM “experts” (faculty researchers) and “novices” (graduate students and post docs). While expert and novice researchers are fairly consistent in distinguishing between text recycling and plagiarism, there is considerable disagreement about appropriate text recycling practice.

Journal
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published
2021-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0047281620915434
Open Access
Closed
Topics

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