The Scoop on Plagiarism

The topic of plagiarism and related issues have received increasing visibility and significance recently. Within the past year, it has been reported that very significant percentages of students have admitted they have plagiarized the work of others, graduate students have been expelled, and university faculty fired. This is thus a topic of great importance to all researchers. The IEEE has recently updated and clarified its policies with respect to plagiarism and the related issue of multiple submissions. The 27 March issue of The Institute contained a nice article describing the problem and introducing the IEEE penalties for violations. The IEEE Web site, under publications, contains an article giving a guideline to the handling allegations of plagiarism and related violations. Less has been said, however, about how referencing of the work of one’s self and others should be handled. In this note, I want to address this latter matter, reuse of previously published material, especially reuse of material from an author’s previously published papers. These issues are often misunderstood not only by authors, but reviewers as well.
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