자기표절, 저작권, 그리고 민주시민사회

Abstract

Self-plagiarism is the ambiguous and difficult term. Even scholars may confuse it with plagiarism. Plagiarism, as defined in the 1999 Black’s Law Dictionary 7th ed., is the act or an instance of copying or stealing another’s words or ideas and attributing them as one’s own. In contrast to plagiarism, according to Wikipedia, self-plagiarism is the reuse of significant, identical, or nearly identical portions of one’s own work without acknowledging that one is doing so or without citing the original work. In principle self-plagiarism is not so much a question of legal or moral issue in journalism as a question of research integrity within academia. Nonetheless, each time a person from academia was nominated for a high government post, self-plagiarism questions were raised not by the academia, but by the media. With the result that the nominated person’s “self-plagiarism” issue was sensationally reported in the press without fact confirmation, it was misused or abused dependent upon factional interest or affiliation. The misuse of self-plagiarism issue might have an adverse effect on the social integration. The misuse of self-plagiarism issue on the basis of factional interest serves as a cautionary tale of how our academia paid too little attention to it. Before the indiscriminate use of self-plagiarism issue, it is worth establishing the objective standard concerning self-plagiarism. Establishment of the objective standard regarding self-plagiarism is academia’s urgent task. The purpose of this paper is to examine the academic arguments of self-plagiarism and establish the substantial standard of self-plagiarism The paper is divided into four parts. The first part is introduction. It provides emerging problems by means of the misuses of self-plagiarism. The second part outlines the meaning and contents of self-plagiarism by examining the terminological origin and making a distinction among self-plagiarism, plagiarism and copyright infringement. Also, the second part examines the existing arguments pertaining to self-plagiarism of other countries, for example, Japan, Germany and U.S. and considers the issues and cases surrounding it in Korean society. The third part emphasizes the primary role of a democratic civil society in the controversy and misunderstanding surrounding self-plagiarism. Finally, this paper concludes with some ways to avoid self-plagiarism.