Actually there is no general guidance on that issue but I believe it will be more lenient comparing to journal publication. It is always up to the university to decide whether it is permissible and the limit to reuse similar content of your previous self writing. Having said that, writing without being transparent about the reused content or appropriately referencing from the original can be regarded as a case of academic misconduct. In my opinion, self plagiarism shouldn’t exceed 1% of your previous publications (sometimes self plagiarism is unavoidable especially when you have published your research findings prior writing the thesis. I supposed appropriate referencing will help in such cases)

Percentage of plagiarism accpetable for thesis writing is about 15 % as per recent UGC guide lines.

Actually there is no general guidance on that issue but I believe it will be more lenient comparing to journal publication. It is always up to the university to decide whether it is permissible and the limit to reuse similar content of your previous self writing. Having said that, writing without being transparent about the reused content or appropriately referencing from the original can be regarded as a case of academic misconduct. In my opinion, self plagiarism shouldn’t exceed 1% of your previous publications (sometimes self plagiarism is unavoidable especially when you have published your research findings prior writing the thesis. I supposed appropriate referencing will help in such cases)

Dear Colleague

I think it differs according to each university guidelines. Also, i do not think there is a difference when it comes to self-plagiarism (it is treated the same way). If you are going to publish it, then most publishers want it below 20% and i believe the same would be acceptable to your university. Yu can consult with your department for further specific information regarding their regulations.

Kind Regards

Thank you all for you suggestions.

It usually depend on the institution accepting the work. For my institution, a thesis would have to achieve an originality score of 20% or less before submission is aloud.

It varies from university to university; but, generally speaking, any kind of plagiarism is not acceptable!

Not more than 20%

19% is the maximum acceptable level of the plagiarism

It depends on the specific university or country. For example, in Sweden a PhD thesis is based on, and accompanied by, a number of papers (usually, anything between 3 and 10) published by the candidate in science journals. There is no requirement for the thesis to contain original work, and it is in fact expected to be only a summary of the papers, showing how the latter tie together into a research project, or at least a "red thread" of logic

Percentage of plagiarism accpetable for thesis is about 10-15 %.

Regards

Any form and Percentage of Plagiarism officially is Not Allowed but Institutions may be flexible from 10 to 20 Percent Maximum.

Do not plagiarize at all. Restate the idea in your own words and provide a citation. If you put the exact words of a source in quotation marks and give the citation with page, it is not plagiarism.

I believe that a postgraduate student writing a thesis should have mastered the paraphrasing and summary skills. Therefore, I think plagiarism should not be allowed.

I agree with Ahmed and Marek. Good points.

I agree with the three colleagues who said that (post)graduate students should already be aware of academc writing norms and therefore should avoid plagiarism. I would like to write about self-plagiarism: it is plagiarism and thus should be avoided, too. It is unfortunate that plagiarism is becoming established with the advent of technology! We are suffering with both undergraduate and graduate students who very often try to find an execuse by stating they do not know it is discouraged!

I have a question here: what is the policy of your university/ institution towards plagiarism? That is, who decides whether the case at hand is plagiarism and which procedures are followed to sentence or acquit a student and whether the students know the laws!!

In India, UGC has issued the norms regarding plagrism, 20 percent is acceptable. But there are no guidelines for self plagrsim, it depends on researchers ethics

The UGC has issued the guidelines regarding acceptance of maximum percentage of similarity index in thesis. Regarding the self plagrism, in my views it should be the part of abovementioned similarity index.

Plagiarism is not acceptable but similarity upto 15% acceptable

In addition to the above mentioned comments, you will get a green signal if using any effective plagiarism detection software e.g. turnitin.

Less than 30% in most of the universities in India but UGC has reviewing and thinking to reduce below 10% in non core area of Ph.D writings by regulation that will come soon and applicable to all universities under UGC purview.

Dear Sriramakrishnan Padmanaban,

See this question that I have already asked in the link :

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Copying_the_text_of_articles_context_state_of_the_art_in_the_thesis_report_is_a_problem

The best answer in my opinion is added by mr Ian Kenned:

If you have published papers on a theme, you are even allowed to republish them as chapters in your thesis-book, with proper citation. This is a quick and reliable way to put your thesis-book together. You first have to arrange the papers so that they are in a suitable order, and discard any which do not support your thesis-theme. You may find that a whole chapter is missing. What you have to do is to edit the papers to shorten them, bring them up to date and to unify your terminology. Finally, you have to write an introductory chapter, and a concluding chapter. I recommend that you add a paragraph at the end of each chapter to introduce the next. I recommend pragmatically that you have a list of references at the end of every chapter, and do not unify it into a single list

Follow the guidelines of your institute, or those of the journal you plan to publish in.

What is percentage of plagiarism? Say I have written a nonsense materials of 1000 pages and finally I have concluded E = MC^2 at the end. If the percentage rule is applied, my work will not be considered plagiarized. Will this solve the problem. Can I finally get rid of E = MC^2 as my conclusion/ findings? The percentage concept of plagiarism is a Nonsense.

As per the latest UGC norms, plagarism content should not be above 10%, both for thesis as well as publications.

As per UGC plag should be lesser than 10%, excluding self plagiarism.

S.K. Lakshmanaprabu kindly tell also where it is mentioned in UGC guidelines that plagiarism should be less than 10% excluding self plagiarism. I wish to read it but unable to find. It will be great if you share the source from where you got it. Will be thankful.

Sriramakrishnan Padmanaban -

The point here is to differentiate between plagiarism and similarity. To avoid plagiarism, cite and acknowledge another authors’ work if you use it. To avoid similarity, paraphrase the other authors’ work. Anyway, you should cite, acknowledge and reference sources that you used appropriately.

20% is the maximum acceptable similarity percentage. However, the less you have similarity the more you get accuracy of your work.