Referencing my own essays?

I want to feature a section in my dissertation that was also a major focus of a term paper that I wrote last term. Can I reference my own term paper, or do I just include the same material, being careful to not quote directly?

Many thanks

Reply 1

Student-95

Just reference it as you normally would with you as the author.

Reply 2

Tootles

Original post by jsgori

You can't reference your own papers - not as you would normally anyway. I would restate what you've said in your previous papers.

Original post by Student-95

Just reference it as you normally would with you as the author.

Nope.

Reply 3

Student-95

Original post by Tootles

Nope.

Yes

Reply 4

Tootles

Original post by Student-95

Yes

HE institutions generally recommend against referencing your own work, saying that if you feel the need to support your own awguments, you are capable of presenting all the information in your paper.

Reply 5

Duncan2012

It's technically possible to reference anything, but with all due respect, I doubt your term paper is sufficiently high quality to be used as a reference.

Using the same sources that you did last term can you make a better argument now than you did before?

Reply 6

Student-95

Original post by Tootles

HE institutions generally recommend against referencing your own work, saying that if you feel the need to support your own awguments, you are capable of presenting all the information in your paper.

Nope. If you're reusing content then it should be referenced as with all sources. Maybe they'd rather you use other references over your own work but if you are using your own work it should still be referenced.

Reply 7

Axiomasher

Bad idea to make references to your own (other undergraduate) work if you're studying at University, You should generally only be referencing original sources or the work of recognised scholars.

Reply 8

Tootles

Original post by Student-95

You shouldn't be referencing your own work at all. When you're doing a degree, you're referencing other papers/publications because the people you're referencing know what they're talking about. Academically, you don't know what you're talking about until you have a degree - this is why you have to use references to back yourself up in the first place. If you reference your own work, you're just going to get laughed at (at best) or penalized/reprimanded (at worst). You may even get into trouble for plagiarism.

Original post by Axiomasher

Bad idea to make references to your own (other undergraduate) work if you're studying at University, You should generally only be referencing original sources or the work of recognised scholars.

Pretty much what I was told when I asked my uni too.

Reply 9

Student-95

Original post by Tootles

...

Lmao, that's complete nonsense. It's the work that you do in the degree that earns the degree so to say there's a hard boundary of knowledge tied solely to the acquisition of a degree is absurd. If you think you can be guilty of plagiarism for referencing your own work then you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Reply 10

Tootles

Original post by Student-95

I opened this up again expecting a reasoned response, but all I got was "nonsense", "absurd", and "no idea what you're talking about". There's no actual content in this message.

Reply 11

Student-95

Original post by Tootles

I opened this up again expecting a reasoned response, but all I got was "nonsense", "absurd", and "no idea what you're talking about". There's no actual content in this message.

Lmao, a reasoned response to the claim that you can be guilty of plagiarism for referencing your own work? That's beyond stupid.

Plagiarism requires 1. Someone else's work 2. No referencing.
If you're referencing your own work then you haven't got either requirement. How do you expect me to take you seriously saying stuff like that lol.

Reply 12

Tootles

Original post by Student-95

I take it you're not familiar, then, with how universities/colleges check work for plagiarism? Here's a clue: they aren't bound or obliged to honour the same definition of the word "plagiarism" as you.

Tell me, have you even been to university?

Reply 13

Student-95

Original post by Tootles

Sounds like you're not. They use software to detect similarity in your work then that similarity will be checked. If a significant chunk of your work is the same as another source or submission without proper referencing then that is plagiarism. If it is referenced then it's not plagiarism. You can still be penalised for referenced work if it takes up a large portion of the assignment but you're not being penalised for plagiarism, you're being penalised because a lot of the work isn't yours so you can't be given many marks for it.

Reply 14

.ACS.

Original post by jsgori

Ignore all the posts in this thread. Ask your dissertation supervisor. Your university will have very specific guidelines on this, and not following them correctly may result in a grade penalty or disciplinary matters. Some universities allow it, and some don't, and equally, one poster said that you should restate what you had said before, but again, some universities do not allow this (assuming that by restate the poster meant copy and paste of what you'd previously written).

Furthermore, you can make your case to your supervisor and see what they say, and whether they think it is relevant or not.