Browsing by Author "Moskovitz, Cary"
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Item Open Access Attitudes toward text recycling in academic writing across disciplines.(Accountability in research, 2018-01) Hall, Susanne; Moskovitz, Cary; Pemberton, Michael AText recycling, the reuse of material from one's own previously published writing in a new text without attribution, is a common academic writing practice that is not yet well understood. While some studies of text recycling in academic writing have been published, no previous study has focused on scholars' attitudes toward text recycling. This article presents results from a survey of over 300 journal editors and editorial board members from 86 top English-language journals in 16 different academic fields regarding text recycling in scholarly articles. Responses indicate that a large majority of academic gatekeepers believe text recycling is allowable in some circumstances; however, there is a lack of clear consensus about when text recycling is or is not appropriate. Opinions varied according to the source of the recycled material, its structural location and rhetorical purpose, and conditions of authorship conditions-as well as by the level of experience as a journal editor. Our study suggests the need for further research on text recycling utilizing focus groups and interviews.Item Open Access Beyond “See Figure 1”: A Heuristic for Writing About Figures and Tables(Journal of College Science Teaching, 2023-02-01) Moskovitz, CaryVisual elements such as graphs, tables, and diagrams are essential components of scientific writing. Although scientific writing textbooks and guides often contain information on how to design such visuals, little has been written on how to effectively discuss those visuals within the text. This article offers a novel heuristic for teaching students how to effectively execute these “passages about visuals” in a way that is both conceptually simple enough to be understood by novices yet rich enough to accommodate the complexity of expert scientific writing. The heuristic consists of a set of “moves”: announce, orient, observe, and explain. Following an explanation of the moves, readers are walked through a variety of examples showing the moves in context and noting the different ways the moves are arranged and executed in published scientific research articles. Pedagogical implications and approaches for using the heuristic in the classroom are then discussed.Item Open Access Common Misconceptions about Text Recycling in Scientific Writing(Bioscience, 2022-10-13) Moskovitz, Cary; Hall, Susanne; Pemberton, MichaelExperienced scientists know there is often a need to repeat some content from their papers, especially when the same methodological approach, experimental apparatus, or statistical analyses are used in related studies. Reusing material from one's published article in a new article is one kind of text recycling. Others include reusing material from a published article in one's dissertation, reworking a conference paper into a journal article, and translating one's work into a different language. Given the wide variety of ways that scientists might recycle text, it isn't surprising that they are often unsure about what is and isn't appropriate. This essay explains common misconceptions about text recycling in scientific writing.Item Open Access Reuse in STEM research writing(AILA Review, 2020-10-07) Pemberton, Michael; Moskovitz, Cary; Hall, Susanne; Anson, Chris MAbstract Text recycling (hereafter TR), sometimes problematically called “self-plagiarism,” involves the verbatim reuse of text from one’s own existing documents in a newly created text – such as the duplication of a paragraph or section from a published article in a new article. Although plagiarism is widely eschewed across academia and the publishing industry, the ethics of TR are not agreed upon and are currently being vigorously debated. As part of a federally funded (US) National Science Foundation grant, we have been studying TR patterns using several methodologies, including interviews with editors about TR values and practices (Pemberton, Hall, Moskovitz, & Anson, 2019) and digitally mediated text-analytic processes to determine the extent of TR in academic publications in the biological sciences, engineering, mathematical and physical sciences, and social, behavioral, and economic sciences (Anson, Moskovitz, & Anson, 2019). In this article, we first describe and illustrate TR in the context of academic writing. We then explain and document several themes that emerged from interviews with publishers of peer-reviewed academic journals. These themes demonstrate the vexed and unsettled nature of TR as a discursive phenomenon in academic writing and publishing. In doing so, we focus on the complex relationships between personal (role-based) and social (norm-based) aspects of scientific publication, complicating conventional models of the writing process that have inadequately accounted for authorial decisions about accuracy, efficiency, self-representation, adherence to existing or imagined rules and norms, perceptions of ownership and copyright, and fears of impropriety.Item Open Access Text Recycling in Chemistry Research: The Need for Clear and Consistent Guidelines(2021-11-29) Moskovitz, CaryLike most scientists, chemists frequently have reason to reuse some materials from their own published articles in new ones, especially when producing a series of closely related papers. Text recycling, the reuse of material from one’s own works, has become a source of considerable confusion and frustration for researchers and editors alike. While text recycling does not pose the same level of ethical concern as matters such as data fabrication or plagiarism, it is much more common and complicated. Much of the confusion stems from a lack of clarity and consistency in publisher guidelines and publishing contracts. Matters are even more complicated when manuscripts are coauthored by researchers residing in different countries. This chapter demonstrates the nature of these problems through an analysis of a set of documents from a single publisher, the American Chemical Society (ACS). The ACS was chosen because it is a leading publisher of chemistry research and because its guidelines and publishing contracts address text recycling in unusual detail. The present analysis takes advantage of this detail to show both the importance of clear, thoughtfully designed text recycling policies and the problems that can arise when publishers fail to bring their various documents into close alignment.Item Open Access Text Recycling in STEM Research: An Exploratory Investigation of Expert and Novice Beliefs and Attitudes(Journal of Technical Writing and Communication) Moskovitz, Cary; Hall, SusanneItem Open Access Text recycling in STEM: A text-analytic study of recently published research articles.(Accountability in research, 2020-11-24) Anson, Ian G; Moskovitz, CaryText recycling, sometimes called "self-plagiarism," is the reuse of material from one's own existing documents in a newly created work. Over the past decade, text recycling has become an increasingly debated practice in research ethics, especially in science and technology fields. Little is known, however, about researchers' actual text recycling practices. We report here on a computational analysis of text recycling in published research articles in STEM disciplines. Using a tool we created in R, we analyze a corpus of 400 published articles from 80 federally funded research projects across eight disciplinary clusters. According to our analysis, STEM research groups frequently recycle some material from their previously published articles. On average, papers in our corpus contained about three recycled sentences per article, though a minority of research teams (around 15%) recycled substantially more content. These findings were generally consistent across STEM disciplines. We also find evidence that researchers superficially alter recycled prose much more often than recycling it verbatim. Based on our findings, which suggest that recycling some amount of material is normative in STEM research writing, researchers and editors would benefit from more appropriate and explicit guidance about what constitutes legitimate practice and how authors should report the presence of recycled material.Item Open Access Text recycling: Views of North American journal editors from an interview-based study(Learned Publishing, 2019-01-01) Moskovitz, Cary; Pemberton, M; Hall, S; Anson, CM© 2019 The Author(s).Learned Publishing © 2019 ALPSP. Over the past decade, text recycling (TR; AKA ‘self-plagiarism’) has become a visible and somewhat contentious practice, particularly in the realm of journal articles. While growing numbers of publishers are writing editorials and formulating guidelines on TR, little is known about how editors view the practice or how they respond to it. We present results from an interview-based study of 21 North American journal editors from a broad range of academic disciplines. Our findings show that editors' beliefs and practices are quite individualized rather than being tied to disciplinary or other structural parameters. While none of our participants supported the use of large amounts of recycled material from one journal article to another, some editors were staunchly against any use of recycled material, while others were accepting of the practice in certain circumstances. Issues of originality, the challenges of rewriting text, the varied circulation of texts, and abiding by copyright law were prominent themes as editors discussed their approaches to TR. Overall, the interviews showed that many editors have not thought systematically about the practice of TR, and they sometimes have trouble aligning their beliefs and practices.Item Open Access There is no absolute expectation about text recycling.(Clin Biochem, 2020-10-09) Moskovitz, Cary