3 replies to this topic

[tintuna]

Hi everyone,

Im doing a PhD which is similar to what I did for my dissertation during my undergrad studies, so the first half of the chapter of my thesis would be pretty much identical to the first half of my dissertation.
The question is, how much can I plagiarise my own dissertation? Its my material after all, is it even considered plagiarism?

What would you do in my situation?

[knuf]

I think that yes, it would be considered plagiarism--kind of like it's dishonest to use the same report for two different classes.

[mdfenko]

you can reference your old dissertation but i'm also sure that your current writing ability is more polished than it was before so you'll be doing more paraphrasing than plagiarizing.

[hobglobin]

What do you mean with "the chapter" of your thesis? Anyway if it's one chapter of several it should be okay, because an undergrad study can be a good starting point of a phd thesis. But it shouldn't be too much (the extent of repetition is critical here) and it anyway makes not much sense to do the same work again??