hi guys

Pardon me for bringing this up yet again - I think this had run a while ago and I honestly don’t recall the counsel given. My PhD is feeding from a past MRES thesis… at least 2 of the chapters. I have loads of tweaking to do on them 2 chapters and my question relates to plagiarising. How do I deal with using so much of my own work, should I quote myself over and over again? (I think not) when I asked my supervision team they simply said, "You are going to tweak a lot…." Am keen to hear from others who have transferred chunks of infor, am sure am not the only one.
Thanks in advance for the feedback!

Check your degree regulations - many universities will not allow the submission of the same work for two different degrees. You may have to rewrite completely. But surely you've moved on a lot intellectually from your MREs so you'd want to make it more sophisticated anyway.

This was discussed in another thread with respect to using a published article in a thesis, and the general conclusion was that different universities have different rules, and supervisors have different opinions on the matter.

A number of uni's will consider using previously assessed work and/or published work as 'self-plagarism' which falls under general plagarism rules.

I guess your supervisors are intimating that you should tweak it enough so that it's not noticeably the same as your MRes. This would seem to indicate that as long as you don't copy word-for-word, you'll get away with it.

But check your uni's specific rules - some places do seem very strict about it, and will even apply the rule to undergraduate essays.

yah my supervisor told me off for using my papers to write two chapters of my phd, even though i rewrote the papers in my "own words" . he still got the impression i just copied pasted! so i have to change it even MORE which is annoying. its like doing the work twice! i sometimes think it would have been better to have written the thesis chapters FIRST! even though my supervisor wanted me to write the papers first.

yeah, definitely be careful. i know two people at undergraduate level who got pulled up for self plagarism. one was given a zero for the assignment but one was kicked off the course, full stop.

also, i wouldn't trust your supervisor to know the answer. whilst wonderful, they're not usually too hot on the rules and regs so go to the grad school, grad tutor, someone at uni level who can direct you to the relevant person in your department/school/faculty.

good luck

A

Thanks Bewildered, yes you are absolutely right ref- intellectual progression hence the massive tweaking to produce quality work, but there are some things that will prove difficult to tweak because they are ok as they are for instance definitions of key concepts against specific contexts; something as simple as defining vulnerable children in countries that am looking at...have to go by each country's definition...impossible to change quotes, honestly you can only change so much, but having said that you and Missspacey have a point, I need to check with the uni's regulations regarding this. Lara I can only hope my supervisor won't give me such a run on this because it can be so time consuming