Text Recycling in Scientific Writing.
Abstract
Text recycling, often called "self-plagiarism", is the practice of reusing textual
material from one's prior documents in a new work. The practice presents a complex
set of ethical and practical challenges to the scientific community, many of which
have not been addressed in prior discourse on the subject. This essay identifies and
discusses these factors in a systematic fashion, concluding with a new definition
of text recycling that takes these factors into account. Topics include terminology,
what is not text recycling, factors affecting judgements about the appropriateness
of text recycling, and visual materials.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Engineering writingPlagiarism
Scientific writing
Self-plagiarism
Text recycling
Textual recycling
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19409Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1007/s11948-017-0008-yPublication Info
Moskovitz, C (2019). Text Recycling in Scientific Writing. Science and engineering ethics, 25(3). pp. 813-851. 10.1007/s11948-017-0008-y. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19409.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
Collections
More Info
Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Cary Moskovitz
Professor of the Practice in the Thompson Writing Program
Cary Moskovitz is Director of Writing in the Disciplines in the Thompson Writing Program.
He also directs the Duke Reader Project and the Text Recycling Research Project.

Articles written by Duke faculty are made available through the campus open access policy. For more information see: Duke Open Access Policy
Rights for Collection: Scholarly Articles
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info