I have to paraphrase my method, because its the same across 2 studies - this is for publication, otherwise I'd just put "see chapter ** for a full overview of the method" or something.

My question is how similar can they be for publication?

e.g. can I change "participants were recruited through snowball sampling" to "snowball sampling was used to recruit participants"

or is that WAY too similar?

Is this for the thesis becuase if so I thought that you were allowed to recycle your own material for theses (and similalry to recycle your thesis into papers). I read something about copyright on a publishers website and there was a reference to previously published work in the form of thesis vs papers. Will try to dig it out.

If it is a rework of a published conference paper into a proper paper I put something along the lines of "substantial parts of this paper were previously published as..." at the end.

http://www.afht.org/copyright-policy/

This was the journal I was thinking of - I assume other journals have similar policies so I don't think you have to paraphrase everything (but supervisors are probably best peopel to check with).

I have 2 theses chapters. Chapter 1 - I do interviews and analyse them in one way. Chapter 2 - I use the same interviews and analyse them in a second way.

For the thesis, I will just say for Chapter 2's method "see chapter 1 for more detail".

BUT this is for 2 publications. I've written Chapter 1 publication up already, so I need to make sure I don't plagarise Chapter 1 publication in the Chapter 2 publication.

Hope that makes sense!

I think it's along the lines of what Jepsonclough said. You should be safe with putting something like 'The methodolgy replicated that of X' or 'A similar methodology to that of X was used...'.

Then it'll need writing out again, and I think so long as it's not exactly word for word you should be okay. As you'll have already given credit to the other publication. Like jepson said though it's worth checking with your supervisor and the individual journal guidelines just in case.

I'm just not sure if the first one will have been accepted by the time I submit the second. I'm not sure I can put "the method closely follows Sneaks (in prep)" :$

For the second publication, can you not just paraphrase the method and then reference: Sneaks, publication 1, forthcoming. If publication 1 isn't going to get published, you don't have a problem. Otherwise, you have referenced yourself. (I wish I could say that ;-)

Does that make sense?

======= Date Modified 07 Jul 2010 16:56:58 =======
ah yes, 'forthcoming' sounds better than 'in prep'

I've starred you.

Thanks Sneaks! Hope it works out.

For some bits it's almost impossible not to "plagiarise" someone - how many ways can you say "participants were recruited by..." "a random sampling strategy was used" "a semi-structured interview approach" and so on.  I wouldn't worry too much (but referencing yourself is apparently a good thing to do so if you can do - also although paper 1 might not be published by the time you submit paper 2 it might have been accepted and therefore be in press by the time you have finished doing revisions to paper2 - if that makes sense)

ooh *imagines skipping through a field of publications*

hey sneaks had similar problem a few month ago when publishing from my thesis. there are two ways i did go about.
1. was reference by ''forthcoming''
2. reference see 'working paper'
3. reerence by 'unpublished thesis' - the surerest way of all three4
4. if u r publishing in 2 A+ journals from the same field then u ave to be extremely careful.

ope it helps abut ave read so many articles from same study but depending on the focus of the journal and the article the methodolgy part is ieasy to bit. but if you r publishing both papers in a methodology journals then u r in deep problem.......

reminder...... ave seen a published paper retracted few yrs later after the editors discover same methodology published elseawre

I think I should be alright - they are in the same area, but will cite myself to be sure and change the wording. The majority of the methodology is different - its just the participants and the interviews are the same, 1st one I did thematic analysis, and 2nd one I did a different kind of analysis, so the methods of each paper are largely made up of describing the analysis rather than the participants etc. but will be careful anyway - thank you!