{"id":529908,"date":"2024-09-11T09:32:51","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T12:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=529908"},"modified":"2024-09-11T09:32:51","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T12:32:51","slug":"the-echo-of-ancient-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-echo-of-ancient-words\/","title":{"rendered":"The echo of ancient words"},"content":{"rendered":"

The debate on ethical limits for authors to recycle their work \u2014 reusing text from their own previously published papers in new scientific manuscripts \u2014 is a long way from a consensus. The approach, easily detectable by software designed to identify similar texts, is often classified as \u201cself-plagiarism,\u201d an attenuated variant of plagiarism. Some people, however, would like to treat the practice more flexibly, especially in specific circumstances. An editorial published in Nature Human Behavior<\/em><\/a> in March argued for greater tolerance of text recycling, defending its use to describe methodologies that are identical to those used in the researcher’s previous experiments.<\/p>\n

According to the journal, what matters most is that any reuse of text is dealt with transparently, with readers made clear that certain excerpts are recycled and with original articles cited as references in new papers. Outside the description of the methodology, however, reuse is \u201cfar less desirable or justified,\u201d according to the editorial: \u201cAs editors, we sometimes encounter papers in which considerable parts of the introduction, results, or discussion sections are copied word-for-word from previous publications by the same author or authors. Readers and editors have an expectation of originality in those sections.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to ethical concerns, an article that repeats things that have already been written is unlikely to result in anything novel, and in the editors’ experience, it is common for replicated stretches to make no difference, functioning only as a crutch. \u201cReusing \u2018boilerplate\u2019 stretches of text outside of the methods section is not only problematic, but is also likely to obscure the specific point that you are trying to make in a paper and to reduce its accessibility and impact. If you find yourself always writing the same paragraph in all of your papers, it is worth considering whether that paragraph actually needs to be in any of them,\u201d say the journal\u2019s editors.<\/p>\n

The suggestion that there are appropriate ways to reuse scientific texts is not new \u2014 the idea has been explored in recent years by researchers at Duke University, USA, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the country\u2019s leading research funding agency for basic science. The team behind the initiative, called the Text Recycling Research Project, published an article in the journal Bioscience<\/em><\/a> in 2023 listing some of the common misconceptions about reusing text. The authors emphasized that it is incorrect to call text recycling fundamentally unethical, given that many journals accept manuscripts containing reused excerpts, for instance when it is restricted to a few sentences or exclusively descriptive sections, or when the authors are open about the text being copied from previous work.<\/p>\n

Similarly, they consider it wrong to use the term \u201cself-plagiarism.\u201d \u201cText recycling doesn’t appropriate the intellectual property of others or deprive them of credit for their work,\u201d says the paper. \u201cPlagiarism is never ethical.\u201d They also state that the practice is not uncommon \u2014 scientists routinely reuse text from conference posters and proceedings about their work when writing articles about their results.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably the biggest challenge of text recycling is the lack of visible and consistent norms,\u201d said Cary Moskovitz, a professor on Duke University’s Science Writing Program and head of the Text Recycling Research Project, at a seminar<\/a> hosted by the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. He noted that accepted practices vary in different fields of knowledge. In a study<\/a> published by his group in the journal Learned Publishing <\/em><\/a>in 2020, 21 editors of journals from various disciplines were interviewed, with just three stating that they do not tolerate any form of text recycling. The other 18 said that depending on the context and the number of excerpts reused, they do not mind.<\/p>\n

In an attempt to establish a set of norms, the project released a guide to good practices on recycling scientific text. According to the document, reusing excerpts from work already published by the same author is even recommended for sections of an article where \u201cconsistency of language is needed for accurate communication,\u201d such as when describing methods and instrumentation. If the copied stretches are particularly long, authors must assess whether or not they are breaking the rules of the journal in which the new paper will be published, consulting the editor if necessary. If the scientist shares the copyright of previous articles with the journals that published them, it is essential to request authorization before recycling the text. Another recommendation is to add a statement to the manuscript notifying readers that it contains recycled text. Once these requirements are met, says Moskovitz, reuse can be carried out ethically and safely. \u201cGood science happens by people slowly and methodically building not only on other people’s work, but also on their own prior work. If we tell people not to recycle text because there’s something inherently untrustworthy or misleading about it, that generates problems for science,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The guidelines have been used by journal editors \u2014 the editorial board of Nature Human Behavior<\/em> itself mentions them \u2014 but they are unlikely to appease the entire scientific community. \u201cIt is widely understood that each published manuscript will include new knowledge and results that advance our understanding of the world. When your manuscript contains uncited recycled information, you are countering the unspoken assumption that you are presenting entirely new discoveries,\u201d wrote American biologists Ben Mudrak and Kimberly Yasutis in an opinion piece titled \u201cSelf-Plagiarism: How to Define It and Why You Should Avoid It.<\/a>\u201d The column was published on the website of an American company that the pair work with called American Journal Experts (AJE), linked to the Springer Nature group, which provides editing, translation, and review services for authors whose native language is not English. Mudrak and Yasutis suggest a simple trick to avoid the temptation of reusing text: when writing a paper, always start from a new file instead of using a draft based on something that has already been published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers and journals discuss limits on when authors can reuse excerpts from their previous work in new articles","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":529909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[230],"coauthors":[98],"class_list":["post-529908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-good-practices","tag-ethics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":529913,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529908\/revisions\/529913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529908"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=529908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}