What Is Self-Plagiarism, and How Can You Avoid It?
Self-plagiarism, or auto-plagiarism, means reusing ideas or specific wording from your own previously submitted or published work.
Yes, you can plagiarize yourself just as you can plagiarize someone else’s work. And even if you cite yourself, heavy reuse can still be plagiarism.
This form of plagiarism can overlap with other types of plagiarism. For instance, you might copy something you’ve written before into your work, intending to go back later, rephrase it, and add a citation and a couple of new points. But maybe you forget, making it accidental plagiarism as well as self-plagiarism.
Or you could paste in a couple of paragraphs from your previous work on the same subject, and just change some of your word choices to make it a little different. If you don’t provide a citation, this would be classified as paraphrasing plagiarism as well as self-plagiarism.
Self-plagiarism occurs when you duplicate your work. Consider a few examples:
- Submitting the same paper for both literature and English class
- Publishing the same article in two different journals
- Using the exact same content you wrote for your blog as part of a nonfiction manuscript
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