Ashis Sinha I JNS: Re-publishing, Re-cycling or Reusing one’s own academic work (published work) in any new research work shall not be accepted and will be considered as Self-plagiarism.
In a statement issued (on 20 April 2020) by UGC stated that the re-use of their own academic work is “self-plagiarism”, and warned everyone against the practice.
“Reproduction, in part or whole, of one’s own previously, published work without adequate citation and proper acknowledgment and claiming the most recent work as new and original for any academic advantage amounts to ‘text-recycling’ (also known as ‘self-plagiarism’) and is not acceptable, the statement reveals.”
Text-recycling or self-plagiarism includes: Republishing the same paper already published elsewhere without due and full citation; Publishing smaller or excerpted work from a longer and previous without due and full citations in order to show a large number of publications; Reusing data already used in a published work, or communicated for publication, in another work without due and full citation; breaking up a longer or larger study into smaller section and publishing them as altogether new work without due and full citation; paraphrasing one’s own previously published work without due and full citation of the original, it stated.
“Self-citation do not add any number to the individual’’s citation index or h-index in global academia,” it added.
The notice issued by the UGC secretary, Rajneesh Jain says, “Vice-Chancellors, Selection Committees, Screening Committees, IQACs and all/any experts involved in academic performance/evaluation and assessment are hereby strongly advised that their decisions in the case of promotions, selections, credit allotment, award of research degrees must be based on an evaluation of the applicant’s published work to ensure that the work being submitted for promotion/selection is not self-plagiarised.”
The UGC has directed all the universities to abide by the instructions in accessing the assignments and papers. At the end of the notice, UGC also mentioned that it would be issuing a set of parameters to evaluate instances of text recycling/self- plagiarism soon.
Early in 2018, UGC had issued the Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions Regulations aiming to curb plagiarism.
