My post yesterday about Cheri Pierson Yecke's recycling of an old op-ed piece was missing one thing: an academic perspective. Yecke is, after all, dean of graduate programs at Harding University, as well as a former state education commissioner. So I called another dean, Linda Krug of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, to see whether reusing one's own work would be acceptable under generally recognized academic standards.
The answer is no.
"We actually call it self-plagiarism," Krug said. "It is a form of academic dishonesty. At best, it's unethical."
Yecke could have quoted from her earlier piece, if she had attributed the quotation, Krug said. And it's common to find "bits and pieces" that recur in a writer's work. This is different.
"It doesn't make me trust what she writes," Krug said. "It's kind of cheating."
Full disclosure: I have used each of these words before. Just not in this order.
