Chris Anson, Susanne Hall, Michael A. Pemberton & Cary Moskovitz. Reuse in STEM Research Writing: Rhetorical and Practical Considerations and Challenges. AILA Review, Vol. 33, 2020, pp. 120–135. issn 1461-0213. doi.org/10.1075/aila.00033.ans LINK  FULL TEXT

Text recycling involves the verbatim reuse of text from one’s own existing documents in a newly-created text— such as the duplication of a paragraph or section from a published article in a new article. Although plagiarism is widely eschewed across academia and the publishing industry, the ethics of text recycling are not agreed upon and are currently being vigorously debated. In this article, we first describe and illustrate text recycling in the context of academic writing. We then explain and document several themes that emerged from interviews with publishers of peer-reviewed academic journals. These themes demonstrate the vexed and unsettle nature of text recycling as a discursive phenomenon in academic writing and publishing. In doing so, we focus on the complex relationships between personal (role-based) and social (norm-based) aspects of scientific publication, complicating conventional models of the writing process that have inadequately accounted for authorial decisions about accuracy, efficiency, self-representation, adherence to existing or imagined rules and norms, perceptions of ownership and copyright, and fears of impropriety.

The TRRP made news in the environmental science magazine Environmental Factor, a publication of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Read the piece, “No clear guidelines on self-plagiarism in science, Moskovitz says” here.

Cary Moskovitz & Susanne Hall. Text Recycling in STEM Research: An Exploratory Investigation of Expert and Novice Beliefs and Attitudes. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, March, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047281620915434  LINK     FULL-TEXT
When writing journal articles, STEM researchers produce a number of other genres such as grant proposals and conference posters, and their articles routinely build directly on their own prior work. As a result, STEM authors often reuse material from their completed documents in producing new documents. While this practice, known as text recycling (or self-plagiarism), is a debated issue in publishing and research ethics, little is known about researchers’ beliefs about what constitutes appropriate practice. This article presents results of an exploratory, survey-based study on beliefs and attitudes toward text recycling among STEM “experts” (faculty researchers) and “novices” (graduate students and postdocs). While expert and novice researchers are fairly consistent in distinguishing between text recycling and plagiarism, there is considerable disagreement about appropriate text recycling practice.

In February, members of the TRRP gave two presentations at the 2020 annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics in Atlanta, GA. Cary Moskovitz presented “The Text Recycling Research Project: The Challenges and Our Approach” as part of the Responsible Conduct Of Research-Research Integrity Consortium pre-conference workshop. Chris Anson, Ian Anson and Michael Pemberton joined Cary to present a panel session, “Findings from the Text Recycling Research Project.”

Cary Moskovitz and Susanne Hall presented “Text Recycling in Scientific Research Writing” at the American Medical Writers Association Medical Writing & Communication Conference in San Diego, CA on Nov 7, 2019.