Can you plagiarize yourself?
Monday, September 15th by CarlaI looked forward to the season premiere of Saturday Night Live over the weekend. Michael Phelps was the guest host. The opening sketch with Amy Poehler and a surprise appearance by Tina Fey was a spot-on satirical piece in the finest tradition of SNL. I was hopeful that it signaled the beginning of one of SNL’s better seasons.
Trouble started with Phelps’s first sketch. The premise was simple: the swim team is in the locker room before a meet, and confidence is sagging. The coach tries to encourage the team with a few words of wisdom. No go. Then he plays some music that he says once inspired him. He starts to dance. The music and dancing are equally goofy, but Coach and Phelps exit the locker room, inspired. The rest of the team is “outta there.”
Michael Phelps holds seven world records in swimming. At age 23 he has won 14 Olympic medals, including 8 at the Beijing Olympics. Nicknamed “Gomer” by his teammates, he is a likeable young man who has certainly earned his 15 minutes of rock star status. This apparently wasn’t impressive enough for the SNL writers. Instead of writing a sketch for Phelps, they recycled the one they wrote for Peyton Manning two years ago and modified it from football to swimming.
Annoyed, I found myself wondering if the SNL writers had plagiarized themselves.
Then I wondered about high school students who revise papers from freshman year and hand them in for sophomore year. Have they plagiarized? After all, they did all the writing. Is it possible to steal from oneself?
I suspect that most schools have policies in place requiring students to create original work for each class. That paper on McCarthyism written for American History class can’t be handed in for study of The Crucible, for example, unless there are special circumstances worked out in advance. But it would be easy for a student to include ideas and statements similar to those in the first paper as s/he writes the second. Would that be plagiarism? Or would it be a natural extension of thinking and learning? Should we teach students to cite their own work?
This will be on my mind the next time I teach the research paper, starting in about a month.
In the meantime, a few words to Michael Phelps: doing the best you could with the material you were given isn’t just a description of that SNL sketch. It’s also a description of life. You rock!
September 15th, 2008 at 9:40 am
I noticed that too. Oh well. We don’t need Phelps to talk now do we?
And Tina Fey *rocks*! She and Sam Bee (Daily Show) are my heroes.
As for the self-plagiarism: I ask that students note the use and how the previous situation applies to the current effort. Of course, it’s imperfect, but I can almost always spot it. A lazy student won’t be able to adequately finesse the information. But for a good/dedicated student, using what they have learned previously should not be discouraged.
September 15th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Jamie, that makes sense to me! Thanks!
September 16th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Yes, it is possible to plagiarize yourself. When I worked in publishing, I had authors who frequently quoted themselves; that is, used material they had written in previous books. We always had to secure permission from the copyright holders (usually the publisher unless the author contracted to retain copyright or the rights have reverted to him or her). I had one author who made a career from recycling his old books–every new book was just a retread of an older one!
September 16th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Linda, thanks for the clarification!
June 12th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I agree with Jamie that using what you have learned in a new paper only helps the student continue their learning. Also for Linda’s statement, doesn’t the rights to the book transfer to the publisher instead of being retained by the author, so if the author wants to re-use his/her statements they are required to get permission because they no longer hold the rights to those ideas?
June 15th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Banjamin, good points. I was mostly annoyed with the SNL writers, who made up an incredibly lame — and so far false — excuse (http://videogum.com/archives/awkward-live-tv/did-snl-recycle-a-sports-playe_021631.html). But the problem really is much bigger, and we walk a very fine line between students who are building on previous learning and students who are looking for an easy way out.