Hello folks

I am just wondering - on the topic of plagiarism - is it considered plagiarism to present your work at a conference (technically classed as a publication) and then also submit the same study in a paper for a journal? I know it must be the norm, as you surely wouldn't have to not publish your work in a journal just because you presented it at a conference, but how does this work in terms of plagiarism?

Thanks so much.

Tudor

I've never considered this to be plagiarism, since, as you say, I've always presented my work at a conference before publication. Conferences are not really the same thing as a publication in my field though. Conferences tend to be for ongoing/unfinished work and it's then expected to be written up in its finished format and published in a journal.

Thank you ToL. Do you tend to drastically reword the abstract to avoid plagiarism anyway?

I always totally reword abstracts. I think this is best practice anyway really, but I also do it because the paper is probably being presented in a slightly different direction to the information presented at the conference, so it needs to be amended anyway. Plus of course it's always easy to look back at a conference abstract and think it is terrible so I end up wanting to totally rewrite it anyway!

OK - thanks for sharing.

Hi again,

I am writing the paper at the same time and so the poster is basically going to be the same as the journal paper. Do you reckon this matters? I can't really come up with a different way of saying things.

Tudor

I think that's fine. Very common.

Ive had two different experiences with this particular issue. When writing my Masters thesis some years ago, I presented at a National Conference. My Masters supervisor was present at my presentation and her recommendation was that I shaped up my presentation into a journal article for an international journal. I did this on her recommendation, and certainly the article was different to my presentation-the presentation was prepared visually and to be spoken, whereas the journal article was much denser and followed the appropriate social science presentation format. Anyway it was published and that was great. The abstract was similar but again much more focused and a bit sharper than the original. It also followed the journal's guidelines so brought in a few more alterations.

However, last year I presented findings from one of my data sets at a conference (international) and asked my current supervisor whether I could submit a version of this to a journal. She indicated this wasn't appropriate and the article needed to be quite different-and I don't think she meant just reformatted. So I've been a bit torn regarding how I am going to publish the findings from this data set.

One thing I've noticed though is that one- even experienced academics are not always right on this one, and two- they change their minds. I'm currently altering something in my thesis that I did (actually changed)on the advice of one supervisor some time ago, that they now tell me needs to be redone in the way I originally did it. Go figure!

Maybe it's different in different fields. In the biology conferences I go to, I see the poster/presentation and then the same info in a journal article published later and vice versa. Of course I don't know whether they reworded things or not, but the data and at least some of the figures are exactly the same.

Thanks both. I've just had a useful piece of information passed on to me - apparently it only matters if the conference proceedings are published and you give the publishers the copyright for your work. Not sure how that would work but if I don't agree to any copyright then I guess I'm OK!

Pjlu, maybe the proceedings (including your whole conference paper) were published and made available for that conference, which is why it wouldn't be appropriate? It is all rather confusing. I guess best to reword as much as possible and try to only present work that's still in progress at conferences? I think that's what I'll aim for going forward.

Thanks for that TQ! The papers definitely were not published as conference proceedings in the second conference which was directed at practitioners as much as it was academics, so article here we come (in a couple of months that is). That information is good to know.