A quip heard in the hallways of some philosophy departments goes like this: when someone publishes a new book, a colleague says, “Congratulations! So, what are you calling it this time around?” With every witticism, there is some level of truth; my professional discipline of philosophy has been somewhat sluggish in addressing the problem of self-plagiarism.

The term self-plagiarism is a contested one, but it generally refers to cases where an author publishes an article a second time without disclosing the first (redundant or duplicate publication) or to cases where there is an excessive undisclosed re-use of some portion of one’s previously-published work (text recycling). Despite differing outlooks about what constitutes inappropriate textual reuse across fields, there is general agreement that in its more extreme forms, self-plagiarism generates three major problems. Each of these problems creates inefficiencies in both the production of knowledge and its transmission.”
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First, self-plagiarism generates an illusion of research productivity, creating unfair advantages for self-plagiarists during competitive evaluations for grants, promotions, job offers, raises, and other perks, such as invited lectureships and conference plenary addresses. When publications are the coin of the realm, counterfeiters can profit at the expense of authentic researchers.

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