Could you please tell something about self-plagiarism. If, self-plagiarism is an offence, how can we explain experimental details which were fabricated or characterised by same procedure and machine?
Because nowadays , there is a software that can identify even similar published paragraphs, by the same authors, one should try to reword ( re-describe) for instance a set of experimental procedures or steps of a methodology and so on in order to avoid self-plagiarism.
I think the only thing that should count as self-plagiarism is publishing the same article in different venues while telling each publisher that the article is only being published in their venue.
Plagiarism in general any data or text that you use in your published article without citing the original source of these data or text.
Self-plagiarism is any data or text you already published and use it one more time without any modification or citing your own published paper through the new one.
I'm totally agree with Prof. Artur Braun and Prof. A. Eldenglawey. Self-plagiarism simply means that you write a sentence, phrase, figure, data or any other thing from your published work in another work as it is even you cited the old work. So you must not take a paste and a copy from the old to the new, but you should reformulate what you want to mention in the new work. Otherwise, you can cite the old work and write the sentence: as mentioned in a previous work [REf.].
There is a lot of systems for publications checking for general and self-plagiarism. That systems looks for similar whole sentences and very similar chains of words - for example 5, 25 word in identical order.
These sytems generally fail in references - treats/counts names and words in titles as in text sentences...
Agreeing with answer provided above, I would like to add that, it is not just copy paste. As many researchers, unfortunately, just copy without going inside of work, that was not justified by the subject either, but somehow publish, as you are new to research, can understand by example, suppose, you write your first work with major help of mentor, in next work you write yourself with little help , if you are not good, you may copy entire or nearly entirly the previous work with small variation, without verifying the insight of new work, as your most of work for a project will be similar but result may be very different, unnoticed or not analysed due to your casual approach.you may even copy a part from X senior and another from y senior, as your mentor will be common author.
I want to discuss 2 hypothetical examples from the experimental section:
1. The used material is an austenitic steel with a chemical
composition of 18.13 % Cr , 10,04 % Ni and 0.4 % Mo .
Would it be possible to use this sentence again and again and only change the percentages? Could this lead to the rejection of my paper by the publishers?
2. The material was produced by casting.
Nearly same question: Is it possible to use this sentence frequently and only adapt the last word to the object of the article ?
In both cases the rest of the section would be unique.
In my opinion, the main purpose of a technical communication, i.e., publishing a technical article, is to subject new findings, i.e., results, of a research study to peers that are being well known as an authority in the research field to critically evaluate the findings for either a recommendation for publication the findings after a major/a minor revision or rejection of the publication. Then, the publication of the findings in an archival documentary system, i.e., journals of a technical society, is basically a warranty of those findings that were obtained by a specific finder.
Therefore, a self-plagiarism in a technical communication wouldn't be of any significant matter at all if the technical communication has original findings.