New Delhi: Republishing or re-cycling of ones own published work in academia without proper citation will now amount to self plagiarism, which is prohibited, according to the University Grants Commission (UGC).
In a notice issued on 20 April 2020, the UGC, the Higher Education regulator, has mentioned that in 2018, the UGC issued the Promotion of Academic integrity 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.
“Reproduction, in part or whole, of one’s own previously published work without adequate citation and proper acknowledgment 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.
As per the UGC Notice, Text-recycling/self-plagiarism includes:
- republishing the same paper already published elsewhere without due and full citation;
- publishing smaller/excerpted work from a longer and previous without due and full citations in
order to show a larger number of publications;
- reusing data already used in a published work, or communicated for publication, in another
work without due and full citation;
- breaking up a longer/larger study into smaller sections and publishing them as altogether new
work without due and full citation;
- paraphrasing one’s own previously published work without due and full citation of the
original.
Self-citations do not add any number/s to the individual’s citation index or h-index in global academia.
Vice Chancellors, Selection Committees, Screening Committees, IQACs and all/any experts involved in academic performance/evaluation and assessment are hereby strongly advised that their decisions in the case of promotions, selections, credit allotment, award of research degrees must be based on an evaluation ofthe applicant’s published work to ensure that the work being submitted for promotion/selection is not self-plagiarized.
