Monthly Archives: August 2019

— First text analytics results to be presented at 8th International Conference on Writing Analytics

Three members of the TRRP will share our first findings on STEM researchers actual recycling practices in a talk titled “Text Recycling in STEM Disciplines: Results from a Text Analytic Study” at the 8th International Conference on Writing Analytics, 5-6 September 2019, Winterthur, Switzerland. Here is the abstract:

Text recycling (TR), sometimes called “self-plagiarism”, is the reuse of text verbatim from one’s own existing documents in a newly- created text. In a (US) federally-funded grant, we have been studying TR patterns using several methodologies. In one strand of  this research, we have created a tool in R to analyze large corpora of published articles to determine the extent of TR occurrence. In this presentation, we briefly describe the goals of the project and the analytic system we have developed. We then share the results of an analysis of 400 published papers associated with eight disciplines. Results show the frequency of TR across disciplines in articles generated from the same grants. These results demonstrate that substantial variation exists in text recycling practices across disciplines and individual authors. We conclude by speculating about the causes of these patterns, especially as they have evolved over time.

Text Recycling Project featured at COPE European Seminar

Three members of the TRRP will be featured speakers at the Committee on Publication Ethics European Seminar in Leiden, Netherlands, Sept 23, 2019. Here is the abstract:

Text recycling research project
Text recycling is an increasingly important and controversial issue in scholarly communication, yet little actual research has been conducted and it is rarely addressed in the ethical training of researchers. The Text Recycling Research Project is the first large scale investigation of the topic. The aim of the NSF-supported project is to better understand text recycling, to help build consensus among stakeholders, and to promote ethical and appropriate practice.

  • What do gatekeepers across academic fields believe about appropriate text recycling practice? Michael Pemberton, Georgia Southern University. Professor of Writing and Linguistics, Director of the University Writing Center, and Editor of Across the Disciplines
  • What do STEM researchers actually do in practice? Cary Moskovitz (Lead PI), Duke University. Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of Writing in the Disciplines, Thompson Writing Program
  • When is text recycling legal and when does it violate copyright or contract law? David R Hansen, Associate University Librarian for Research, Collections and Scholarly Communications, Lead Copyright and Information Policy Officer, Duke University Libraries