Self-plagiarism will not be accepted in any new research work: UGC

Reusing one’s own published work in academia without proper citation will now constitute

Reusing one’s own published work in academia without proper citation will now constitute

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plagiarism according to the University Grants Commission (UGC).

In a notice issued on Monday, the apex body regulating all higher education institutes in

the country said that self-plagiarism will not be accepted in any new research work. “Reproduction, in part or whole, of one’s own previously published work without adequate citation and proper acknowledgement 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,” said the notice issued by UGC secretary Rajneesh Jain.

In 2018, the UGC issued the Promotion of Academic lntegrity and Prevention of Plagiarism

in Higher Educational Institutions Regulations in an effort to curb plagiarism. The UGC’s recent notice banning self-plagiarism is yet another part of its initiative to restrict academic piracy.

According to the regulatory body, text-recycling of self-plagiarism can be in the form of

republishing the same paper already published elsewhere without due and full citation or even publishing smaller or excerpted work from a longer and previous work in order to show a larger number of publications. Reusing data already used in a published work, or communicated for publication, in another work will not be accepted.

Researchers can neither publish smaller parts of a longer study as new work nor paraphrase their own previously published work. To be able to do any of these, they must give full citation of their published work, said the UGC adding that self-citations will not add to the researcher’s citation index or h-index in global academia.

The UGC has directed university authorities involved in academic performance evaluation and

assessment to be on the lookout for self-plagiarism while deciding promotions, selections, credit allotment and award of research degrees.