Hi, I am taking a college composition class, but I am still in high school. In high school, I wrote an informative essay on a topic, and my college class has a writing assignment where my essay would satisfy the requirements, once I change my essay from informative to persuasive. If I modify my high school essay slightly would it be considered plagiarism considering that I was the sole writer of the original essay and it would have been turned in, to turnitin, but not posted publicly anywhere?
Should self-derived written content create a possible issue for my course?
It would technically be self-plagiarism. Meaning that while it is technically your content, the university would reject it and you may face penalties from your university.
You would need to rephrase it entirely if you want to reuse the content. You can use a tool like WriteCheck, which lets you scan a paper against Turnitin's database (without saving a copy of the paper to the Turnitin database), to check to see whether your paper will pass.
Prescott Papers also offers a "Cheat Turnitin" service for this exact type of situation, where you can have a paper fully rewritten and checked against Turnitin's database using WriteCheck to ensure 100% that your paper will pass Turnitin.
It's not plagiarism if you are the author of the essay. You cannot plagiarize yourself and you can reuse your own content as much as you want. Otherwise, it wouldn't make logical sense (it's like sending the same resume to multiple employers - some of them would claim you stole the resume.. from yourself)?
DO NOT use ANY plagiarism tools - the majority of them SAVE the content and once it's submitted, the content WILL BE either reused or published without your written / explicit consent.
According to APA Section 1.10, ("Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism"), you may not reuse your own writing except in very limited circumstances with appropriate acknowledgment. The honor codes of most colleges and universities that define plagiarism also specifically include (and describe) self-plagiarism.
You wil have to rephrase your entire work. You can use the information but would have re-write the composition
@essaywriter73
Not exactly. Plagiarism includes the intellectual ideas and analyses, not just the words used to express them. If the intellectual content is the same, it's still plagiarism (or self-plagiarism, as the case may be) even if you replace every single word in the piece with a different word.
If the intellectual content is the same, it's still plagiarism
It makes no sense - let's start with a definition of plagiarism, from Google:
Plagiarism - the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
synonyms: copying, infringement of copyright, piracy, theft, stealing.Who am I - someone else? It's hard to believe an experienced writer would fall for this logical fallacy.
Why don't you follow that same methodology and just Google "self-plagiarism"?
In any case, you're confusing two separate issues. What you quoted pertains to the notion that plagiarism isn't just about the words used; it's also about the intellectual ideas. So, if you just rewrite someone else's ideas in your words, it's still plagiarism. Your rhetorical comment pertains to the notion of self-plagiarism, which is something specifically defined by the APA and by the honor codes of most academic institutions..
Ok, from Google/Wikipedia:
The reuse of significant, identical, or nearly identical portions of one's own work without acknowledging that one is doing so or citing the original work is sometimes described as "self-plagiarism"; the term "recycling fraud" has been used.
As a student, I put MY NAME on a paper; I acknowledge I'm the author of my own work. In result, the 'self-plagiarism' idea is bogus (unless you haven't acknowledged your authorship).
In the context of self-plagiarism, "acknowledgment" means explaining that the work (or a section of it) comes from something you wrote previously.
The issue isn't the identity of the author, but the date (and purpose) of original authorship. In the case of something previously published in a journal, "acknowledgment" means statements such as "As I explained in my 2012 article ... " to disclose that you're quoting or paraphrasing your own previous writing.
In the context of academic self-plagiarism, putting your name on your essay isn't "acknowledging" anything, because (again), the identity of the author isn't the issue.
"Acknowledgment" in that context would require disclosing that "this work currently being submitted for credit is substantially the same and/or was substantially derived from an earlier academic assignment written by the student for a different course."
I'm not lobbying for any specific definition of plagiarism or self-plagiarism; I'm just telling you how self-plagiarism is defined, especially by the honor codes of academic institutions.
Whether or not you think it should be, self-plagiarism is most definitely "a thing."
Something being 'defined' is no argument at all. There are a lot of abstract things that have a formal 'definition' but in reality it is meaningless and serve any logical purpose. On the other hand, it's a little ironic or hypocritical that you mention the honor codes of academic institutions that your customers willingly break. You don't have any Terms and Conditions for your customers on how to use your material properly in order to honor the codes of said academic institutions, do you.
Everyone here is correct:
1. Self-plagiarism is completely illogical. Outside of college, no one would ever think twice about someone reusing or republishing their own ideas
2. Colleges are also illogical. In general, they will consider reusing a previous paper that you wrote to be inappropriate use and will refer to such use as self-plagiarism
The poster asked whether he would have problems reusing the content for a different university course and the answer is that regardless of the fact that it is illogical, your university will consider it to be plagiarism in almost all cases.
You are missing a critical point - colleges don't condone self-plagiarism because 99.9% of whatever students write is reiterated from other sources and has no intrinsic value as a scientific paper. But even the most cited scholars will mention that they draw ideas from their previous work, albeit they're not required to do so.
Whatever the reason for it is, the point is that colleges disapprove of it.
The main takeaway for the original poster is that if he submits the project again the college will almost definitely consider it a violation of their honor code.
The best way out is to rewrite it, which should be simple since the idea is yours.
@essaywriting
Interestingly, "rewriting" it from scratch eliminates the self-plagiarism issue in principle, but doesn't necessarily solve the OP's original dilemma about the content being flagged by a scanner. As any high-volume academic writer can tell you, it's entirely possible to write almost the exact same essay accidentally if you've already written about the topic many times before. In fact, it's something we learn to be very careful about, by checking old projects, especially if something we're writing sounds too familiar. It's not much different from the way people often retell stories to their friends almost the exact same way every time. If you were to genuinely rewrite the essay from scratch without even looking at the older essay but express some of the same ideas in very similar ways, the plagiarism scanner has no way of knowing that you didn't just reuse the older content already stored in its database and it would get flagged.
As far as I am concerned, re-using your own works is considered to be a self-plagiarism and is not allowed at colleges and universities.
When I have lack of ideas for a new paper I usually ask help at write paper - this is a good writing service for completing essays and any other kinds of writing assignments. I appreciate it for getting original topics not the overused ones which I can find at any other website.
Also, these guys do protect me from plagiarism by running all works through a special software..
@FreelanceWriter explained it best. I'll add: unless an assignment specifically calls for combining past assignments to complete a current/final assignment, always assume you many NOT reuse your past work. I know it sucks, but it is plagiarism and not worth the risk. :)
In my opinion, you should not merely rephrase your original essay in order to use it in your new class. That would definitely be considered self-plagiarism and, as mentioned before, it would be against academic honor codes. However, there are no rules against you using that previous essay as the basis of your new paper. If you must, use that as a guideline for your new essay. It is sure to hasten your research process because, provided the information in your original essay is not over 5 years old, then you can still use the same information for the persuasive essay. Just make sure that you add new sources of information to which is newer in date than the ones you had in your previous paper.
I believe that you could use about 30 % of the old sources, depending upon the year of publication to at least help you get started in developing your persuasive reasons. It isn't considered plagiarism to use the old sources from your original essay as other students may also come across the information and use the same in their own papers. In order to avoid plagiarism problems, just write a new essay, the old essay should just be an assisting tool for your new research and discussion development.
It could. However, nobody said that the possibility that it could cause issues for you should prevent you from using the essay. What you can do, is use the essay as the basis or foundation for the content of your new essay. Like @Smiley73 said, you can use about 30% of the paper. Just make sure to integrate the information into your new paper. Take the old information, present it in the paper then update the information to reflect the improved presentation. As an origin source, using the old information should not pose any problems. You just need to know how to present it to make it relevant and look different from the original presentation.
Cite, once again, you're offering irresponsible advice that is going to hurt those students who follow it. Your opinions are not more powerful than prevailing academic policy (sketched out competently by Prescott above) or the legal issues that term-paper sellers have to deal with in countries with consumer protection, copyright, and anti-plagiarism laws. There's no anchor in reality, proof or example in your posts, so it's hard to tell where you're coming from, or why you're spreading misinformation here. Why the mods let you continue is also a mystery.
All of the advice above from Cite would make perfect sense had the OP asked, "
How can I plagiarize from my own previous essay and avoid getting caught by turnitin?" But that's
not what the OP asked at all. The OP specifically asked whether using his own old essay
is considered plagiarism and whether getting caught doing that through turnitin would be a "problem" for him .
If I modify my high school essay slightly would it be considered plagiarism considering that I was the sole writer of the original essay and it would have been turned in, to turnitin, but not posted publicly anywhere?
Should self-derived written content create a possible issue for my course?
The correct answers are:
(1) Yes. Reusing
any part of your own old essay is
considered plagiarism by every instructor on the planet. Just Google "self plagiarism" to determine whose advice on this matter is correct and whose advice on this matter is completely incorrect. You can also probably find this information in whatever honor codes your institution or professor provides defining plagiarism.
(2) Yes. If a professor finds out that you reused material from your old essay because it gets flagged by turnitin, you will definitely be accused of cheating. Some professors might punish you less harshly (such as by giving you the chance to redo the assignment) than students caught plagiarizing someone
else's work; but that's purely a function of the professor's choice to be merciful about it and/or to believe that it was attributable to an honest mistake. That mistake would be, precisely, not understanding that self-plagiarism "is considered" plagiarism.
Again, there's no need to take my word for any of this: just Google "self-plagiarism" for yourself.
Adding my own opinion to this thread. I believe that one can avoid the problem of self plagiarism by simply acknowledging that the very start that the paper you are writing is going to be an updated version of your previous high school paper or, a continuation of that research. It is a matter of acknowledging the original source of the idea, which was the high school paper of the student, which will be used as the basis of the new essay. This should allow him to reuse sections of the original essay without being accused of self plagiarism. Just frame it in a way that acknowledges your original writing and everything should be fine.
The opinions are that of the author's alone based on an individual capacity. Opinions are provided "as is" and are not error-free.
It would be much safer to simply ask the professor, first; and I'd expect that the response, 100% of the time, would be an absolute refusal even to allow an essay on the same topic as any essay previously submitted for credit by that student, ever in his academic career, let alone an essay actually reusing or repurposing any material from an old essay.
