By Ganiu Bamgbose
I found it interesting that the last two times journals had requested of me to rework aspects of my papers that shared similarities with other works, those other works were actually my own works. Self-plagiarism could be the toughest form of plagiarism to overcome and it manifests in different ways. Self-plagiarism makes you feel unguilty where there should be guilt. It makes you normalise and/or trivialise an unacceptable act. I have classified self-plagiarism into three and labelled them fraudulent self-plagiarism, frivolous self-plagiarism and fixated self-plagiarism. They shall be discussed in the subsequent paragraphs.
Collins Dictionary says that a fraudulent activity is deliberately deceitful, dishonest, or untrue. Fraudulent self-plagiarism happens for instance when you have to use a theory you had earlier used in a study for another work you are writing and your sense of ownership of the earlier work makes you feel comfortable to just pull out a paragraph or some sentences here and there into the new work. Until a self-check or an outlet proves to you that you have taken too much from that source without proper citation, such act simply comes with sense of ownership or, at worst, looks to you like minor stealing. “Who steals from themselves, anyway”, you tend to tell yourself this as you think you are just taking from what belongs to you. It is important to treat this fraudulent self-plagiarism like every other kind of plagiarism and deliberately desist from engaging in such act.
Moving on, If you describe an activity as frivolous, you disapprove of it because it is not useful and wastes time or money. Frivolous self-plagiarism does not amount to intellectual theft and does not have legal implication. It is simply excessive self-citation. It happens when a writer finds a way to cite their earlier works even when there is no genuine need for such in the new work. I recall that I have had to tell a journal editor to inform the contributor to reduce their unnecessarily heavy presence in the submission even when the exercise was a blind review. This frivolous self-plagiarism is often done to gain visibility for earlier works and boost citations on search engines. While it is in place to cite relevant works even if they are one’s works, doing so excessively especially when such works cited do not directly border on the new one amounts to self-plagiarism.
The fixated self-plagiarism is also not a criminal or illegal act. It is one that comes with the boredom of style, language choice and use of cliche. Every writer has their active vocabulary. Note that vocabulary means the words that a person knows in a language and can use to communicate. Everyone has their active and passive vocabulary. Children can sometimes tell that word daddy must use daily even if he makes just five sentences. It could even be small words also called fillers or discourse markers such as “perhaps” “very well” and so on. They are not also uncommon in writing. Sometimes these words are platitudes that have come to lose their academic taste. Two common ones among Nigerian scholars especially in abstract writing are “not so much has been done on this subject” and “attention has not been given to this area”. A careful look at your publications might reveal to you that there are some expressions you have used in almost all of them. While this may not affect the scientific quality of such publications, it makes one boring to those who will be interested in studying one’s works. Writers must, therefore, be deliberate about varying their writing style in their manuscripts.
Whether fraudulent, frivolous or fixated, self-plagiarism is an academic bad habit. Every writer must be deliberate about expunging traces of self-plagiarism in their scholarly, literary and other forms of writing.
(c) 2025 Ganiu Bamgbose writes from the Department of English, Lagos State University.
