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.)