Copying the content from Ph.D. thesis of someone else to a research paper or vice-versa without citing the source is unethical.

Copying the content from Ph.D. thesis of someone else to a research paper or vice-versa without citing the source is unethical.

Is it ethical to copy the content from Ph.D. thesis to research paper or vice-versa? Yes, but only accompanied by the proper citation/s (Ph.D. theses or research papers).

Yes but you have to cite it as a reference

Hi everyone,

Interesting discussion !

i don't think it is a matter if the entier research work is attributed exclusivelly to the student and their PhD thesis director. Neverthless, What can we say, if the research work has done by the participation of other members ?

Thanks.

Neverthless, What can we say, if the research work has done by the participation of other members ? What matters is the proper citation/s, independently of the number of authors of the research work.

Read the question, it says own Ph.D thesis

I would agree with those who say that it is acceptable as long as you inform about the fact that you already published this text in a previous publication.

Dear scientists, thanks for all these replies.

In my opinion, for avoiding all ethical issues regarding the transfer of texts from already published articles that imply many co-authors, In this cas, which is most convenient when you prepare the PhD text, is to perform the paraphrazing or to re

-write the text by your own expressions, and certainly accompanied by the proper citation(s).

Regards.

Very reasonable solution, Terek.

You are encouraged to quote (NOT copy word by word) from your own thesis in your own or joined research papers. To extend and/or amend the conclusion of your thesis as result of further research is the right thing to do.

You may also publish your thesis as a stand-alone monograph.

Your supervisor should or might give such advice. Anyway, I hope my response helps.

Copying contents from a Ph.D. thesis for writing one or more journal articles is an acceptable practice as long as it is mentioned in your cover letter and cited in the manuscript. However, if the thesis is already published or placed with online repositories (as practised by University Grants Commission, India), in that case, the plagiarism checking software used by the journal will detect a high percentage of similar content. Some journals might have a problem with this. Therefore, it is advisable to take the ideas and rewrite the content using the style and format of a journal submission.

Dear Sandip A Kale I do not really see how it could be possible "to copy the content from own Ph.D. thesis to research paper or vice-versa". When you publish a research paper in a scientific journal, you have to strictly adhere the the journal's style and follow the "Instructions for Authors". PhD theses normally have a different style and structure than journal papers. Of course it is perfectly OK to publish parts of PhD thesis before the thesis is written and submitted. These papers can be used when writing the thesis, but it is advisable to rephrase the text.

Dear all,

Thank you for your replies and good discussion.

I came across such cases, when plagiarism is checked for the papers received for the conference. I found similarity of 85 to 99 %.

When communicated with authors, they replied the content is taken from their own thesis.

Can you please share your opinion in such case?

Reference it, reference it.

It is important to mention in the manuscript that these results are part of a previous or future project. Do not forget to make the corresponding appointment.

Prof. Cristian Germán Hernández and Prof. Donal Kiernan Thank you for the answer.

For the ethical record I am a Psychotherapist and Addiction Counsellor, most certainly not a Professor.

The highest academic qualification I hold from mainstream education is a Master of Arts.

To quote a well known Irish poet: "I know that through a hole in reasons ceiling, I can fly to knowledge without going to college". - Kavanagh.

Dear Sandip A Kale I my understanding a PhD thesis is not an official publication as is it is not listed on Google Scholar or Scopus. Of course, everyone is free to post PhD theses as full texts on RG. However, every part of the thesis can be separately published in the form of regular research papers. Even of you copy-and-paste sentences or even entire phrases from the thesis, I would not call this self-plagiarism. On the other hand, if parts of the thesis have been published beforehand, these research publications can even be used as a "cumulative dissertation" (see link cited below):

https://www.unr.uni-freiburg.de/dokumente/promotionen/Cumulative%20versus%20monographic%20Dissertation.pdf

Donal Kiernan Thank you for comments.

Frank T. Edelmann Sir, thank you for your good descriptive contribution.

Sandip A Kale

Dear Professor,

Its an interesting topic that you have raised for a discussion because of its eccentricity. To tell you the truth, this question never came to my mind before reading it here.

When you have pursued a research, you may then think of writing a paper/s on the basis of your research. If you write such a paper/s, then it is natural that you will be taking materials from the thesis. There is a difference between taking materials from the thesis and self-plagiarizing. You cannot write a paper based on your own research, without giving the impression to the reader that it is the same person who has written both the thesis and the paper based on it (assume that both are available to the reader). This is not self plagiarizing. Self-plagiarizing means copying the same materials word by word. It is difficult to do so. In a thesis you write in more details. When the same thing is written in the form of a research paper, then it has to be written in a short form and by following the rules and regulations of the journal. To tell you the truth, it is in fact most of the time an impossible proposition to self-plagiarize from a thesis to a paper/ s.

I did not really understand what you meant by "vice versa" because the concept of plagiarizing from your paper/ s to your own thesis is uniquely impossible. This is because most of the time you are going to write the paper/ s, once the thesis is ready or close to being ready.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Anamitra.

Dear Anamitra Roy, thank you for your contribution.

I also like to reply your second part as: in India some institutes are not allowing word to word content from own published paper also in the thesis, when they are checking the similarity.

Sandeep a Kale you have raised a very relevant issue. Recently, I came across a situation when, when registering an electronic resource that I am engaged in, the author provided a description with borrowing from his dissertation. This author was denied registration, since only resources that meet the requirements of novelty are registered. And the novelty of an electronic resource is correlated with the originality (lack of borrowing) of the description of this resource. The higher the author's intelligence, the closer the correlation is to "0". In other words, the higher the author's intelligence, the less he borrows even from his own works.

CREATE WITH YOUR OWN MIND!

Sandip A Kale

Dear Professor,

If they are doing so, then I must say that I agree with them. A thesis is supposed to be the most original document. Thank you for sharing this information here.

Best regards,

Anamitra.

Dear Aleksandra Galkina Thank you for your contribution.

Dear shahin mardani

Yes in my opinion from own thesis authors can write the article and it may not be considered even for self plagarism.

No

For sure it is not ethical.

Faraed Salman Thank you for your contribution.

In my opinion it is ethical to copy our own thesis and make it either article..paper ..book anything..but there should be one thing...we should have prepared our thesis by our own drafting ..no doubt we consult books...journals...we should try to give credit to both books and journals.but after understanding their concept we should grasp it and make our own...then no plagiarism at all......

Greetings, Rifat Bhat! We are writing about the same thing. When working on a dissertation, we form a certain block of scientific knowledge, which is the starting point of a new work (articles, books, etc.) WITHOUT REPETITIONS AND EXCERPTS from the DISSERTATION. Thus, we reduce the problem of plagiarism and self-citation to zero.

Rifat Bhat Thank you for sharing your opinion.

Aleksandra Galkina Yes, I agree with you. The issue is raised during similarity checking. It is not acceptable by Journal when you are publishing (If copied from thesis to paper) and also by the University (If copied from paper to thesis.)

Hi, since we have the same results of research to put either on the thesis then on the article, it will be impossible to avoid the simillarity between both documents. However, the percentage of simillarity could be decreased when we write two different texts.

Kindly!

Copying own thesis is not unethical but copying someone else is unethical unless it is cited properly.

Tarek Moussaoui Thank you for optimized comment.

Mohammed Khandaker Thank you for sharing your opinion.

its fine to use data from your own thesis, however, to reuse any "published data" in a peer reviewed journal which is "not" open-access you must properly cite and refer to the article and if you want to circulate the article online or put a public copy even if it is yours you must take a permission from that journal. in case of those articles published in open-access journals, you must properly cite them but its fine to circulate these kind of papers online and you can put a public copy if you want.

In order to make the article more widely available and use it in future articles, it is important to publish in magazines with an open CC BY 4.0 license. This license allows you to use, distribute, recycle, correct and develop the article for any, including commercial purposes, provided that the authorship of the original article is indicated.

Moamen G. El-Samrah and Aleksandra Galkina Thank you for sharing your opinion.

It is not ehtical due to failure to embrace the challenge of providing solutions to the problem or challenge at hand.

Xavier Tawanda Zona Thank you for your reply.

hi

I think its not wrong to copy your data and description from your thesis and convert it into research paper or any other article....but here replica of data and description should be avoided , once used...

i think thesis which we made is not the replica of any concept itself

For publishing any data or description we are helping others so we should be honest and transparent ....because TURNING PEER PRESSURE POSITIVE IS A KEY TO SUCCESS....

Rifat Bhat Thank you for your reply.

I found one good content related to this question. Sharing with you for ready reference.

https://www.editage.com/insights/the-basics-of-converting-your-phd-thesis-into-journal-articles

Is it ethical?

Some authors are concerned that journals might not accept content that has already been published as a thesis or dissertation, or that submitting such articles to a journal might be considered self-plagiarism or duplicate submission or lead to copyright issues. While this is field and case specific, in general, journals are not against publishing articles that have been published as thesis elsewhere. There are several reasons for this.

1. Theses are not formal publications: The primary reason why most editors accept such articles is that most journals do not consider theses or dissertaions as formal publications. This is because theses or dissertations are traditionally published by university presses, with a few copies printed for internal circulation. Since these are not widely circulated, publishing a journal article is a good way to make the research accessible to the science community.

However, there are some exceptions where the thesis is published by an academic publisher and made available online. Some journals might have a problem with this. You should always inform the journal editor if your manuscript is based on your thesis and cite it in your manuscript if it is available online. Being transparent will clear you of the risk of unintentionally doing something that is not ethical. 

2. Copyright is not a problem: Secondly, unlike journal articles that require authors to transfer copyright to the journal before publication, the copyright for a thesis usually remains with the author. Thus, authors are technically free to reuse the content from a thesis or dissertation, and the question of copyright breach is ruled out. Of course, you should make sure that you include a copyright page in your dissertation and get your copyright registered.

3. Duplication and self-plagiarism can be avoided: Additionally, a thesis and a journal article are completely different in terms of overall approach and format. To convert a thesis/dissertation into a journal article, it has to be rewritten and refined. More often, a journal article is crafted based on an excerpt or a chapter of a thesis, and sometimes, multiple articles can be published based on different thesis chapters. The journal article undergoes further revisions during peer review, which makes it substantially different from the thesis, thus solving the problem of duplication. Charges of self-plagiarism can be avoided by citing the thesis/dissertation in the journal paper, and using block quotes wherever content has been copied verbatim.

Most importantly, you should inform the editor at the time of submission that your article is based on your thesis, mention when and where it has been published, and state your willingness to provide a copy if required. Being open and honest with the editor is always an advantage as he or she will then be able to guide you and suggest ways to avoid any ethical glitches that you might be unaware of.

It will be regarded as plagiarism if u r following the ethical rules, in addition to that it will make ur work be regarded as unoriginal.

Faraed Salman Thank you for sharing your opinion.

This became very difficult at the time of publication of research articles when your own pg and PhD thesis considered for plerism and captured by software's of journals ....this become very disappointing even name of genotypes ...is plerism what a fun.

.

M.K. Tripathi Thank you for your answer.

@ Sandeep a Kay!

Link ttps ://www.editage.com/insights/the-basis-conversion-your-PhD-thesis-to-journal-articles very specific, capacious, accessible to understand. But you noticed in the text "copyright registration." I wonder what this means?

Copying from your own PhD thesis is not a problem as long as you express it in another terms. However, you need to cite it in your new write-up so that plagiarism will be avoided whenever applies to software application once verified.

In Russia, paraphrasing is also plagiarism and is one of the methods of increasing the originality of a scientific text.

The ANTIPLAGIAT system of text originality assessment allows us to evaluate the dynamics of changes in the originality of scientific texts over time. So my analysis allowed me to conclude that the number of descriptions of electronic educational resources with originality of less than 70% tends to "0", and the number of descriptions of electronic educational resources with originality of 100% exponentially increases.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Thank you Sandip A Kale for your question.

In several universities in Europe, the thesis is 3-4 papers published in peer-review journals. Little is written in the thesis such as content page, introduction, glossary etc. Therefore, you do not need to rewrite again what was written in these publications. In other countries, where a thesis should be presented in a classical academic format, you should publish your work, say 3-4 papers. In the thesis, refer to these publications and conference presentations. Now the format in the thesis is different from papers, and you may integrate content and reshape what you have presented in the papers. This is important to keep the thesis organised.

I think, YOGESH CHANDRA TRIPATHI, the question is about self-plagiarism, not about plagiarising the work of others. The question is not about "the work of someone else" it states "your own work". That is how I understand the question.

The point raised by Dr Sandip A Kale is about copyrights as well. His thesis will be copyright by the university granting the degrees; while his publications will be copyright by the journals, he submitted his work for publication. This is the basis of his question, is this ethical or approved? That is the question and its moral/legal basis.

Aleksandra Galkina Thank you for sharing your opinions.

Ronald Valledor Gomeseria Thank you for your opinion.

Samy Azer Sir,

Thank you for clearing many doubts.

As a rule, scientific research or culminates in a research report and is accompanied by scientific publications in the form of articles, monographs, dissertations. The journey from research to dissertation is therefore well worthwhile.

Aleksandra Galkina Thank you for your reply.

It is absolutely ethical as long as the articles and the the dissertations are made from the same research project.

Isaac Dinaharan Thank you for your reply.

Of course it is ethical. As Samy Azer pointed out, many universities encourage post-graduate students to include published papers emanating from their research projects in their theses and dissertations, either in the format used by the journal in which the paper was published, or as result chapters. A letter should then be included describing the exact contributions by the student and co-authors.

Jacques van Rooy Thank you Sir for your opinion.