Q: Will using content from my published papers for a textbook be regarded as self-plagiarism?
I have published some articles and now I'm working on a textbook (not a textbook chapter). Will it be considered self-plagiarism if I use these articles in the textbook? For the figures, I have the permission of the publishers to re-use them. For the text, I don't know what to do. Of course, I will cite the articles but to which extent can I include the content from the articles in the textbook?
Any sentence that is copied verbatim from a published source amounts to plagiarism. So, in your case, if you reproduce all the sentences from your published articles as it is, it will be regarded as self-plagiarism. You can use the concepts and ideas presented in your articles and cite the articles as reference; but, you will have to re-phrase all the sentences and not repeat them word to word. Once an article gets published in a journal, it becomes a copyrighted material of that journal and using the same sentences from your own article will be treated as infringement of copyright.
Hence, please avoid using the same sentences; use the results presented to make a point, use the conclusions written to voice out the thoughts and establish a theory, use the discussed material to emphasize on the significance of the work, but never use the same sentences – re-word them to avoid self-plagiarism.
The following articles might help you gain more insights into self-plagiarism:
- Avoiding self-plagiarism: A case study
- What's the big deal about self-plagiarism?
- Can an author write a blog post based on his or her own research paper?
- Is it self-plagiarism if I publish a journal article based on a book that I've co-authored?
- My paper has been rejected on the grounds of plagiarism. What should I do?
This content belongs to the Manuscript Writing Stage