hmmm I am hoping Jouri is right! will make my life easier

I have a feeling this issue may boil down to different subject matters, different practices.

You would be wise to check with your supervisors and Senate House.

It would be wise to accept that, in reality, nobody cares about this particular "legal" issue. The legal issue is ridiculous, if you think about it. You work on the same subject as for your PhD, publish one part of this and then you quote it like some other person you don't personally know has talked about it. Ridiculous. Like split personality or something. If you want to make life more complicated, feel free to do so. My supervisor has told me that examiners don't like to read PhD theses with too much emphasis on own papers in the form of "Myself (2007) stated..." and so on. In many universities you are required to submit any paper publications together with your thesis, so they know what you've done anyway. It is very common practice to put excerpts from these papers into the actual thesis. Remember that every publication will have only 3-6k words anyway. So how many percent of your PhD thesis will that be? Even if you have 10 papers which is unlikely.

Presuming the practice of copying published papers into one's thesis is allowable - and I should define 'copying' here, I mean literally word-for-word putting the whole or a subtantial part of the content of a published paper into a thesis -then wouldn't every PhD student be following this practice? Ultimately life would be easier and we'd all have more publications.

Personally, I have never heard of anyone doing it... but rather drawing subtantial material from a publication and then referencing, or slotting articles into the back of a thesis, or using abstracts, is the common practice.

Jouri - fair game, if you can do it, then do it, particularly if you have your supervisors' backing. Personally, I wouldn't do it, as some examiners, in my discipline at least, would frown on it.

I did a quick Google on the concept of 'self plagiarism' and thesis writing: Sheffield find it 'unacceptable' in thesis writing, UCL, Hull, UWE find it unacceptable or to be avoided within their general rules. LSE say previous work can be used, but only if referenced. I only looked briefly, but on that alone (excluding the issue of copyright) ...it's probably best to re-write and cite.

Most journals have a special paragraph regarding theses/dissertations etc. Here is one I found in a copyright statement and similar wordings can be seen in other journals' copyright statements:
"Retained Rights
As an author, you have the right to use your articles in a variety of ways. This includes the use of the article by your employing institute or company. These rights are retained and permitted without the need to obtain specific permission from ....:
- Inclusion in thesis or dissertation: The right to include the article in a thesis or dissertation provided that this is not to be published commercially.
- Use at conferences: the right to present the paper at a meeting or conference and to hand out copies of the paper to the delegates attending the meeting."
This is quoted from http://www.springer.com/authors?SGWID=0-111-6-124756-0

Damn word limit.

Damn word limit.

Best thing to do is to look up the copyright transfer agreement you signed when your paper was accepted by the journal and see what they say about thesis/dissertation inclusions.

There is a style of thesis which is becoming more common - to publish a series of papers with a short intro and summary. It's especially appropriate in the sciences. I've been advised to follow that style. I have a copy of a dutch thesis in a close field which is exactly like this. Some chapters are the actual papers and some are adapted for her thesis and this is stated at the start of each chapter.

For various reasons I will have to adapt my chapters from the thesis - partly because there just isn't time to do it the other way around. I will be using a book chapter I wrote - but my supervisor advised me to re-write it, not use it as it is. It will need adapting and updating anyway. But in the end, this format should be a big help in cutting it up into papers.

Thanks everyone for their help!!

Yep, sounds like a plan, I will ask my supervisor and see what he says, as he knows best. The thing is the WHOLE point of me writing the paper FIRST was to help me with my thesis chapter! and to have a skeleton of the chapter, and then to just add to it. obviously it wont just be a complete copy paste job, because the paper is only about 5000 words, and i am aiming to have the chapter be about 10,000 words. and i think its ridiculous to cite myself in my own thesis. as someone said, it's like split personality. the findings in the paper, IS my phd. i've just published it. which my supervisor told me, may help me to pass my phd.

i wanted to write my thesis but my supervisor told me to write the paper first. and get it published.

but a collegue of mine has just wrote to me saying, i do not need to rewrite the whole paper and she's going to call me tonight.

checked the copyright form i signed for the paper. could not find any thing specifiying a thesis. but it did say:

"the right to republish without charge, in print format, all or part of the material from the published Contribution in a book written by the Contributor"

thanks again everyone!

Smilodon
yeh, thats what my supervisor was saying also, how in the sciences (my phd is in science) they are doing that.

While it is reasonable to assume that you'll never get in trouble for copying one of your papers into your PhD, you really should check with your PhD's future publisher, because they might get in trouble.

Also check the RoMEO status of your publishers to learn about their policies: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php

Thanks Sam for your help.

at the moment I have writers block :(

i hate my supervisor and what he said to me concerning my 2nd paper and now i have writers block. because i hate him so much. and i cant even bring myself to read my 2nd paper and use it as a foundation to write my chapter.

i spent a year working on my 2nd paper, meticulously checking the data, making loads of figures, changing them as requested. writing drafts after drafts. and then finally giving them my final draft. and then he turns around and says to me based on the fact i haven't written my thesis yet, and my deadline is september..

"Where is the productivity? And then **** and I both ended up putting a lot of work into the papers to make them presentable."

i feel utterly gutted. the email was sent last week. but it's still haunting me