Text recycling is widely discussed in the research community. However, editors and authors may have contrasting opinions on this matter. What are the reasons for their disagreement, in what sections text recycling is appropriate and how to avoid self-plagiarism? In this editorial I am going to illuminate these issues.
In the guidelines for editors the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) defines text recycling as the use of the same text in several publications of an author (Risser, 2020). According to Professor Cary Moskovitz from Duke University, this practice involves small text fragments that are amended to a slight extent between publications (ibid, 2020). Earlier policies on text recycling applied the term “self-plagiarism”, which was disused due to inaccurate implications. Lately, the definition was elaborated. Text recycling is currently perceived as the reuse of textual information in a new document where 1) material is identical or almost identical to the original work, 2) the material is not presented as a direct quote, 3) one author of the new document is also an author of the previous document (Hall et al., 2021).