Topic 1: Citation Rules – Avoiding plagiarism – from the work of others and one’s own

That plagiarism is inadmissible, is surely beyond doubt. In practice, however, it may, for example, be unclear where the border lies between an “almost identical” paraphrasing and a free explanation of content and it remains unclear how often the source should be given for lengthy passages. There may also be a need for orientation with regard to the issue of how references to German-language literature should be made, as they may be not well received in English-language publications, because they cannot be understood by readers. There may be guidelines to these and other issues in publications on academic writing to which special reference should be made (established academics will often think that such work is only or mainly directed at students). An important sub-topic on plagiarism entails dealing with plagiarism detection software.

The concept of self-plagiarism is controversial. In the meantime, however, it seems clear that the integration of segments of one’s own work that are literally the same or even the same in meaning, should be indicated. There is further a need for clearer orientation, for example, on the issue of how to deal with English-language publications which are often not keen to accept quotations from German-language work. Therefore, how can and should, for example, the editors of journals be made aware of text passages that have already been used in German-language publications?

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