When you wrote it before

摘要

In our previous editorial, we described plagiarism as using someone else's words or ideas without acknowledging the original source. In other words, if we use the phrase "When Others Wrote it First" without acknowledging this as the title of a previous editorial (Froman & Jennings, 2013), then we have plagiarized. You might respond by saying, "But you are Froman and Jennings," and that would be correct. In the example, however, we would have committed a special form of plagiarism— self-plagiarism—because we would have used words we wrote before, words that are now copyrighted (Baggs, 2008; Broome, 2004). The ideas emphasized in this editorial include self-plagiarism, copyright infringement, and duplicate publication. Whereas self-plagiarism and duplicate publication involve ethics, copyright infringement is a legal matter. As Broome (2004) noted, the law is less open to interpretation than are ethical considerations.