What does Text Recycling mean?

Recycling, in general, implies harnessing a particular resource and repurposing it. On the similar lines, text recycling is reuse of same text in more than one of the author’s own publications, (usually un-attributed to the original source). Elaborating the definition further, ‘text recycling’ is the reuse of textual material, e.g., prose, equations, and graphics in a new publication which is identical to a previous publication (essentially similar in both structure and content), written without quotation, and at least one of the authors of the new publication is a co-author of the source publication. Text recycling is also referred to as ‘self-plagiarism’ which is different than ‘true plagiarism’, where another author’s work is included without due attribution. In recent years, the advent of new software has enabled easy detection of true plagiarism. But due to lack of clear guidelines, the issue of text recycling is difficult to address. 

To understand text recycling, it is very important to have clear document specific policies that address ethical and legal concerns for each type of publication. In some cases, text recycling may be ethical, professionally appropriate, legal, and even desirable for the communication of ideas. For example, explaining a research technique with standard content, formulations and descriptions is accepted if not mentioned otherwise in the publication guidelines. At the same time, text recycling can also be unethical, professionally inappropriate, infringe copyright, or inhibit communication. For example, a paragraph copied from an article already published by a different publisher.

What is right and what is wrong?
While the authors should not be discouraged from recycling their published material, explicit guidelines for text recycling 
should be provided so that the authors can ethically communicate scholarly materials. Nonetheless, we must admit 
that such guidelines are difficult to draft due to the contextual nature of text recycling.    

Considering articles presenting experimental research, attention should be given to the various sections – 

Introduction / Background: Text recycling is unavoidable to a certain degree here, typically in a highly specialized / researched topic. The authors should try to minimize the extent of text repetition compared to the source text. Materials and Methods: Techniques can be cited to the original articles and described briefly in the new article. The senior authors among the co-authors should oversee the extent of overlap of text in comparison to the source document, keeping in mind the current knowledge of the field. 

Results: Do not go for text recycling in this section. If previously published data is included in the results section, the publication editors may consider the document as a duplicate (redundant) publication. In unavoidable circumstances (e. g. study extension), the duplication must be reported transparently with proper attribution to the source document. 

Discussion: Again, as this section is based on the results presented, text recycling is unacceptable. The document will be considered as duplicate if previously published ideas are presented verbatim in the new article. 

Conclusion: The conclusions should strictly be presented in authors’ own words. The editor may consider the novelty of the articles based on the way the conclusions are written without text recycling. 

Figures and Tables: Reproduction of previously published figures or tables amount to data duplication and therefore, this practice is not recommended. 

The supervisors should guide their research students from early on, so that they are aware of the ethical and legal concerns that may stem from text recycling.