Cheating and the Honor Code

[soccerguy315]

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Can somebody explain the logic behind self-plagarism being identified as cheating? I mean, I can see if you turned in a paper, got corrections on that paper and a grade, and used that corrected paper for another class, then that would be unfair, since you used the teachers’ corrections to benefit you. But if you reused the same uncorrected version of the paper, how is that cheating?

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<p>I didn’t really know how to explain it, so I went looking for an answer for you =P</p>

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In writing, self-plagiarism occurs when authors reuse their own previously written work or data in a ‘new’ written product without letting the reader know that this material has appeared elsewhere. According to Hexam, “… the essence of self-plagiarism is [that] the author attempts to deceive the reader”. </p>

<p>Although in scholarly and scientific writing there are some situations in which some forms of text reuse are acceptable, many other instances in which text and/or data are known to have been reused violate the ethical spirit of scholarly research. The concept of ethical writing, about which this instructional resource revolves, entails an implicit contract between reader and writer whereby the reader assumes, unless otherwise noted, that the material was written by the author, is new, is original and is accurate to the best of the author’s abilities.

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<p>click through a couple pages and you’ll get to this one, which is the one that you are concerned about:

Redundant publication has a direct counterpart in the area of academic dishonesty- it is referred to as ‘double dipping’. It occurs when a student submits a whole paper or a substantial portion of a paper to fulfill a course requirement, even though that paper had earlier been submitted to satisfy the requirements for another course taught by a different professor. Many college undergraduates and even some graduate students are not aware that this type of practice is a serious offense and constitutes plagiarism. Of course, as in redundant publication, submitting the same paper, or a large portion of a paper, to two different courses is entirely acceptable if the instructors of both courses were informed by the student of the double submission, and if both agreed to the arrangement. However, some institutions have specific policies prohibiting this practice.

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<p>link: <a href=“http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~roigm/plagiarism/Self%20plagiarism.html[/url]”>http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~roigm/plagiarism/Self%20plagiarism.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[Vail]

<p>Thanks soccerguy315, I’ll look at that link sometime, thanks for copying the important parts though.</p>