Turning unpublished report into conference paper - self-plagiarism?

November 25, 2013 8:27 AM

I'm trying to turn my masters report into a conference paper. This mainly involves shortening it by many, many pages. Masters reports in my department are not published or even listed online or at the library. The only way anyone could ever read it or even know about it is to ask me or my advisor for a copy. Instead, the way I am sharing the work is to write a conference paper on the same subject. Do I need to cite my own unpublished report?

Do I need to change wording of paragraphs and cite images I created for the report? That feels really, really silly and a bit neurotic, but I can't help worrying about it. Mainly because I have actually cited unpublished masters reports from other people, but only when no peer-reviewed form of the work was available.

Fyi, this is in engineering. I think we are generally more lax about this stuff than humanities or social sciences. The paper will describe the exact same work as the report, but just be shorter. (I have not done any additional work since I wrote the report.)

posted by Gravel to Education (9 answers total)

The CFP for the conference you are submitting to will explain what types of previously "published" work can be submitted. It varies by conference, and the more industry-focused conferences tend to be more flexible than the more academic conferences.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 8:37 AM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

What martinX's bellbottoms said, plus check with your department's academic ethics advisor. Odds are this is fine as long as you cite somewhere near the beginning, "This paper was taken from research conducted for a report completed as part of the author's Master's degree studies" or suchlike.

ETA: Remember, plagiarism isn't just copying -- plagiarism is copying without citing. Cite everything, even if it's your own work, and you'll be fine.
posted by Etrigan at 8:38 AM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: It is not just ok to publish it as a conference paper, it is expected.

There is no point in rewording it or redoing the figures. It is perfectly ok to cite it and/or place a footnote indicating that it is an abbreviated version of your M.S. thesis.

Normally it's done in the other order- write the conference papers and then incorporate the text from the conference papers into the MS thesis, but your way is also done (which is what I did).
posted by deanc at 8:39 AM on November 25, 2013 [9 favorites]

No, you don't need to change your figures/wording. Yes, you might want to cite it (once) just so that someone who's genuinely interested knows that there's a document with more information in it. That way, the poor nervous grad student (who doesn't want to send cold-call emails to an established researcher like you), can say "could you send me a copy of the report?" instead of "I know that experiment was 5 years ago, but I was wondering about x and if you happen to have anything that explains that at all".
posted by aimedwander at 8:40 AM on November 25, 2013

Do I need to cite my own unpublished report?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Not really, unless the norms in your field require it, which you or your advisor would probaly know.

Do I need to change wording of paragraphs and cite images I created for the report?

No.

Fyi, this is in engineering. I think we are generally more lax about this stuff than humanities or social sciences.

I work in a social science and would not advise a student to cite their own unpublished master's thesis for a conference paper, or to make any textual changes just to avoid self-plagiarization. Likewise, I would not advise someone submitting to a journal to cite the previous conference-paper versions of the project, or to make textual changes just to ensure that the submitted paper is "different enough."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:40 AM on November 25, 2013

Don't worry about it. You could put a little acknowledgment or something in their, "This work is a development of work submitted for the MSc programme at NAME university", maybe just before the references, but even that is not necessary. (I do social sciences in an engineering dept if that is any help.)

Only problems you might face: (1) is if the work is going to be submitted again after publication. Your uni will not be happy if you get credit twice for something. (2) make sure all the authors are named on the paper and agree to be in the paper.
posted by biffa at 8:42 AM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

Since it's not available, it should not be cited, I'd argue. I will sometimes do stuff for internal-use memos, which I may then expand into publications (with the clinets' full consent, of course). I'd view this the same way. A note about what the paper was abstracted from may be useful, but mostly, people won't care.

My major concern, were I your advisor, would be in precluding proper journal publication by inclusion in a proceedings. If that's not a consideration, if your best route to publication is a conference proceedings, then by all means.
posted by bonehead at 3:00 PM on November 25, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks everyone! just what I wanted to hear. I'll double check with my advisor on whether to even mention it.
posted by Gravel at 9:28 PM on November 25, 2013

You may still want to redo your figures, but only because figures in presntations or posters often look better with different styles than in a thesis or journal publication.

On screen or a poster, you typically want to weight communication over detail and clarity over formalism. This sometimes means stripping off details or presenting them in a different format. It can influence types of fonts used and how busy your graphs are. Journals and university library's are often rather fussy about using serif fonts and certain type sizes which may not work well at all on posters or in presentations. For an accompanying paper though, you should be able to use them without modification.
posted by bonehead at 9:12 AM on November 26, 2013