Self-Plagiarism Research Literature in the Social Sciences: A Scoping Review

Eaton, Sarah Elaine; Crossman, Katherine

Self-Plagiarism Research Literature in the Social Sciences: A Scoping Review

dc.contributor.author	Eaton, Sarah Elaine
dc.contributor.author	Crossman, Katherine
dc.date.accessioned	2018-06-18T20:10:52Z
dc.date.available	2018-06-18T20:10:52Z
dc.date.issued	2018-06
dc.description.abstract	Self-plagiarism is a contentious issue in higher education, research and scholarly publishing contexts. The practice is problematic because it disrupts scientific publishing by over-emphasizing results, increasing journal publication costs, and artificially inflating journal impact, among other consequences. We hypothesized that there was a dearth of empirical studies on the topic of self-plagiarism, with an over-abundance of editorial and commentary articles based on anecdotal evidence. The research question was: What typologies of evidence characterize the literature on self-plagiarism in scholarly and research journals? We conducted a scoping review, using the search terms “self-plagiarism” and “self-plagiarism” (hyphenated), consulting five social sciences research databases, supplemented by a manual search for articles, resulting in over 5900 results. After removing duplicates and excluding non-scholarly sources, we arrived at a data set of 133 sources, with publication dates ranging from 1968 to 2017. With an interrater reliability of over 93% between two researchers, our typological analysis revealed 47 sources (34.3%) were editorials; 41 (29.9%) were conceptual research (including teaching cases); 16 (11.7%) were editorial responses; 12 (8.6%) were secondary research; and only 8 sources (5.8%) were primary research. There is little guidance in the available literature to graduate students or their professors about how to disentangle the complexities of self-plagiarism. With primary and secondary research combined accounting for 14.4% of overall contributions to the data set, and primary research constituting only 6% of overall contributions, we conclude with a call for more empirical evidence on the topic to support contributions to the scholarly dialogue.	en_US
dc.description.grantingagency	University of Calgary - Research Grant	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Eaton, S. E., & Crossman, K. (2018). Self-plagiarism research literature in the social sciences: A scoping review. Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education, 1-27. Retrieved from https://rdcu.be/YR5u doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s1078	en_US
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.1007/s1078	en_US
dc.identifier.grantnumber	10015164	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1880/106763
dc.identifier.uri	https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/46345
dc.language.iso	en	en_US
dc.publisher	Springer	en_US
dc.publisher.faculty	Werklund School of Education	en_US
dc.publisher.hasversion	Post-print	en_US
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary	en_US
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary	en_US
dc.rights	Unless otherwise indicated, this material is protected by copyright and has been made available with authorization from the copyright owner. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.	en_US
dc.rights.uri	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0	en_US
dc.subject	self-plagiarism	en_US
dc.subject	plagiarism	en_US
dc.subject	text recycling	en_US
dc.subject	scoping review	en_US
dc.subject	graduate students	en_US
dc.subject	primary research	en_US
dc.subject	secondary research	en_US
dc.title	Self-Plagiarism Research Literature in the Social Sciences: A Scoping Review	en_US
dc.type	journal article	en_US