Resources on Avoiding Plagiarism
Department of Political Science
Concordia University

III. How Not to Plagiarize
B. Types and Examples of Plagiarism

Type 5: Multiple Submission and Self-Plagiarism
Re-using something that you originally wrote for a different purpose (e.g., a different class or assignment) without acknowledging the original is a form of plagiarism called self-plagiarism.

For students, this most commonly takes the form of submitting work for credit in one course that the student had previously written and submitted for another course. (For authors, publishing the same material without acknowledgment in different articles or books can be self-plagiarism.)

Concordia's Academic Code of Conduct treats this as a separate offense
"multiple submission" defined as "the submission of a piece of work for evaluative purposes when that work has been or is currently being submitted for evaluative purposes in another course at the University or in another teaching institution without the knowledge and permission of the instructor or instructors involved."

If you are submitting the same or substantially similar work in two different classes, you must obtain permission from both instructors. If you submit work in a course at Concordia that was written for a previous class (at Concordia or another educational institution), you must obtain permission from the instructor of the current course to re-use the material. Without such permission, you are committing multiple submission, a violation of the Academic Code of Conduct.

(Obviously, different drafts of the same assignment will contain substantially identical writing, and do not count as self-plagiarism or multiple submission. However,  any time you use something you've written in more than one assigment
even for the same course or instructor make sure you have permission from the instructor to do so.)


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