Hi, I found myself confronted to a serious methodological and ethical issue regarding the use of whole passages from an MA dissertation in the text of a doctoral thesis. The author of both papers is the same; but I think that it is not acceptable to re-use previous theoretical sections from an MA dissertation in a doctoral thesis. I precise that the sections were copied without any quotation marks or whetever features showing that they were taken from somewhere else.
What do you think?
You treat your past work as if it was done by a different author. You provide full referencing and use quotation marks where necessary. Otherwise, you're very likely to run foul of the well established rules on self-plagiarism.
Christopher NOCK
This is an issue. Sometimes it in innocently called text recycling. For MA (and articles) -> PhD often much material is related, particularly as articles from the PhD are often already published (and most PhD students are encouraged to publish before submission to be better on the job market). This should be listed acknoweldged somewhere in the thesis (e.g., Chapter 6 has been published, in a slightly different form, in ***, in the preface). There has been a lot of discussion about self-plagarism recently in relation to Robert Sternberg (e.g., https://andrewgelman.com/2018/11/04/cornell-prof-not-pizzagate-guy-one-quick-trick-getting-1700-peer-reviewed-publications-cv/). I think the level of being acceptable for self-plagarizing is different than copying someone else. Talks often re-use slides, and when a prominant academic is giving 20 invited talks at departments throughout a year hopefully her theories/data are not changing, and the talk also will be more polished. I sometimes apologize if I know folks in the audience have heard a joke I am about to give before!
You treat your past work as if it was done by a different author. You provide full referencing and use quotation marks where necessary. Otherwise, you're very likely to run foul of the well established rules on self-plagiarism.
Christopher NOCK
@Wright and Mr.Nock, thanks a lot for your messages. I really do appreciate their content as they match with my own ideas about this topic. I think that self-plagiarism could be permissible to certain limits but it shoul not be allowed when whole MA sections are copied and pasted.
There are pros and cons for that. The main aspects you have to keep in mind when writing your PhD thesis:
- it has to be original and provide new results and content
- if you use whatever source you have to clearly inform the reader about what has been taken from where (as should be done in all research)
So how about your MA-thesis? What you should not do:
- copy an paste and leave the reader with the impression that things are brandnew
- copy and paste large aspects 1:1 even if informing the reader about it being an unpuslished MA-thesis
- even if using material from your MA-thesis, even if rewriting it, and even if informing the reader about where it stems from if it makes for a great deal of your PhD-thesis your thesis ain't new. Don't do it!
So what you can do
- use your MA-thesis and it's topic and go from there. Your previous research might make for a good basis of a PhD-thesis. The positive aspect of this: you got a starting point and the likeliness of finishing your PhD-thesis in due time is higher. Remember: there are many PhD-students who fail to deliver in the end.
- Remember that your PhD-thesis is supposed to bring about new and unique material and results, there is not much new if you just take everything from your MA-thesis.
- No copy and paste and always keep the reader informed. If you started a biographical research on a group of 50 members of parliament, and in your PhD-thesis you decide to do one for 755 members of parliament, there is no point leaving out those 50 members you have already covered. In your PhD-thesis you might extend your archival research and add to those 50 you have already dealt with too. You might have visited 3 archives for those, but since you now extend it to 6 archives, you will not just copy everything from previous research.
In the end of the day you will have to decide:
- what makes my thesis? Is it a PhD thesis in it's own right or basically my MA-thesis with two more chapters? No 1 is the thing to go for, No 2 - well, thats not actually a PhD-thesis at all.
Yea, thanks Stephan. I got the gist!
Bashir, you really should also take a look at the thread about "Why is self-plagiarism wrong" or something like that.
NOCK
Just a late thought. In my day, the author retained the copyright to any thesis. So, unless that was passed on to a publisher, it remained retained.
As such, I'd imagine if you retain the copyright, you can do what you want with it. Just reference where it's come from in the higher thesis. I only THINK that's the case. I MAY BE WRONG!
NOCK
Extensive inclusion of previous work, whether presented as is, or paraphrased, should be relegated to an appendix.
I'm not sure that's strictly necessary Karl. I'd be happy with disclosure of sources in footnotes. But that does depend on how it's done. Perhaps appendix for straight lifted passages. But often there's developments and expansions of various themes previously identified elsewhere.
NOCK
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