Self plagiarism and salami slicing

robyn.owens — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:55:00 GMT

Self plagiarism occurs when you re-use your own published work in your current work, without citing the original published work. It's considered an academic crime because in the act of publication you have assigned the ownership of your original work to someone else (the Journal), and now you are passing it off as it it were once again your own.

Salami slicing refers to the act of chopping your work up into tiny publons: units of publication that are minimal at best, just enough to get published (a publon is also known as a least publishable increment). Salami slicing usually occurs with the re-use of data, or with a slight change of data but saying essentially the same thing in another publication.

Both self plagiarism and salami slicing are considered poor practice because they flood the academic community with near identical papers, making it more difficult for scholars to find relevant information.

The very obvious use of cut-and-paste (identical wording for very large parts of the chapter) is disappointing. Perhaps this could have been avoided by structuring the results differently?

Ethical research

robyn.owens — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 23:51:00 GMT

I am sure that those of you engaged in research that involves humans or animals know that you need to obtain Ethics Approval before you do the study. UWA is committed to a highly ethical approach to research, and it’s not just us: the Government requires it from a legislative point of view, and examiners expect to see it as a way of demonstrating your professionalism. Thus, just obtaining approval is not enough; you need to explicitly mention the process and approval mechanisms at each stage of the thesis.

Here’s one examiner’s comments relating to this:

“However, evidence of the ethics approval process she went through before interviewing respondents was absent (as noted above, this point applies to both surveys). It is normal practice to offer confidentiality, to explain that respondents have the right to refuse to answer some questions and to have access to a summary of the results. However, the telephone interview questionnaire does not mention confidentiality or outline respondents’ rights as research participants. Was ethical approval sought from a Human Ethics Committee? Was an internal review undertaken and approval given following this?”

theEzone : Ethics

Self plagiarism and salami slicing

Ethical research