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• Copyright Queries

Plagiarism and self-plagiarism

By ucylcjh, on 29 January 2019

Copyright infringement arises from re-using someone’s work without the permission of the copyright owner (or the benefit of a licence or suitable copyright exception) and is a legal issue. On the other hand, plagiarism arises from re-using someone else’s work in a way which implies it is your own. It is essentially a matter of ethics and academic discipline rather than a legal issue, although the consequences can be very serious.

Naturally the two problems can often overlap (re-using work without a legal basis and without acknowledgement). The key to avoiding plagiarism is always to acknowledge other people’s work when you are quoting form it or when relying upon ideas developed by someone else. That way you can’t be suspected of passing it off as your own work.

The UCL Copyright team are often asked about the dangers of self-plagiarism:

“Will  I be in danger of self-plagiarism if I re-use material from my thesis in a published article?” or conversely perhaps: “Can I use material from my previously journal articles in my thesis?”

Self-plagiarism is a real issue, in the sense of recycling you previous work as though it were wholly original, in a context where a certain level of originality is essential. The key to avoiding this danger is very similar to avoiding any kind of plagiarism: You need to be scrupulous about citing your own previous work where you are quoting from it or relying upon it.

In the context of your  thesis there may be separate academic issues about relying too heavily on your previously published work even though you are crediting it scrupulously, so in those circumstances  it would be good to discuss that with your PhD supervisor at an early stage.

Filed under Copyright Queries

Tags: PhD theses , plagiarism , self-plagiarism

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Welcome to the Comparative Literature Subject Guide

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• BoB (Box of Broadcasts) Access for UCL students and staff only. Access to BoB is only permitted within the United Kingdom . Requires login with UCL username and password. BoB is Learning on Screen’s on demand TV and radio service for education allowing users to record programmes from over 75 free-to-air channels, access over 2.2 million broadcasts dating back to the 1970s, create playlists, clips and clip compilations; search programme transcripts and subtitles; embed content in VLEs and share on social media
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New books in Comparative Literature

World Literature as Discovery: Expanding the World Literary Canon / Zhang Longxi

The Many Languages of Comparative Literature / / La littérature comparée: multiples langues, multiples langages / Die vielen Sprachen der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft : Collected Papers of the 21st Congress of the ICLA. Volume 1, The Languages o

Authors Reviewing Authors Reviewing Authors Reviewing Authors Reviewing Authors

The Spark of Modernism: Twenty Speculative Stories and Writings That Defined an Era, 1886-1939 / edited by William Gillard, James Reitter, Robert Stauffer

Miss Sophie's Diary and other stories / Ding Ling ; translated by W.J.F. Jenner.

Homecoming / Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

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Plagiarism and what are acceptable similarity scores?

Dec 1, 2020 • knowledge article, information.

The Similarity Report is a flexible document that provides a summary of matching or similar text in submitted work compared against a huge database of Internet sources, journals and previously submitted work, allowing students and instructors to review matches between a submitted work and the database scanned by Turnitin. Therefore, the Turnitin Similarity Report does not define whether or not a student's work is plagiarized. The instructor responsible for the course - as a subject matter expert - has a duty to exercise academic judgement on the work that is submitted to Turnitin for their classes. The percentage that is returned on a student's submission (called similarity index or similarity score) defines how much of that material matches other material in the database, it is not a marker as to whether a student has or has not plagiarized. Matches will be displayed to material that has been correctly cited and used, which is where the instructor's academic judgement must come into play. Please find our guide links below on how to interpret the Similarity Report and its similarity score: If you are a student, click here . If you are an instructor, click here . 

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UCL LLM graduate, Dheemanth Vangimalla, wins an international research essay prize

22 May 2024

UCL Laws LLM graduate, Dheemanth Vangimalla, wins the top award in the 4iP Council Research Awards 2023 for a paper based on his LLM research dissertation. Dheemanth will be speaking about his research topic at a webinar organised by 4iP Council, on 30th May.

We are delighted to announce that Dheemanth Vangimalla, a recent UCL Laws graduate of the LLM in Intellectual Property Law has received the top award in the prestigious 4iP Council Research Awards for 2023 for his paper entitled ‘Plausibility and the flotilla: have the English courts drifted from the commodore’s approach to the evidential requirement for patent validity, and if so, is this divergence justified?’

The 4iP Council Research Award is an international research competition for European University students studying at Masters and PhD levels. It seeks to promote new ideas on topics pertinent to the interplay between intellectual property rights and innovation. Submissions, based on a student’s Masters or PhD research, are assessed by 4iP Council’s Research Award Jury made up of intellectual property experts from academia, government and industry. The papers are evaluated based on criteria including:

• Original thinking that broadens the debate on the chosen topic;
• High quality written expression; and
• Relevance to current IP problems and debate

and up to three prizes are awarded (winner and two runners-up).

In his winning paper, Dheemanth considered the origins of ‘plausibility’ and explored the evidential requirement that the term represents. His research revealed that there is divergence between the EPO and English courts in the evidential standard applied by the two decision-making bodies when assessing patent validity. He argues that the English courts adopting a higher standard lacks cogent justification as the standard neither reflects a balance between the competing objectives of the patent system nor limits a plausibility assessment to its targeted mischief. 

This paper was based on Dheemanth’s dissertation for his LLM in Intellectual Property Law, which was also recently awarded the IBIL Prize for Top Performance in an IP-related Research Essay on the LLM . During his LLM, Dheemanth was supervised by our IBIL scholarship PhD researcher, Joshua Bradley .

As part of the prize, the winning essay has been published on 4iP Council’s website , and Dheemanth will be speaking at a webinar about plausibility - orgainised by 4iP - along with IBIL's Professor Robin Jacob, on 30 May. More details of the event can be found here . 

Having completed his LLM in the summer of 2023, Dheemanth has been working as a Research Assistant at the UCL Institute of Brand and Innovation Law  (IBIL), while also completing his bar exams. He will join Three New Square Chambers in the autumn as a pupil barrister.

• Read Dheemanth’s paper here .
• Find out more about the 4iP Council Research Awards
• Register to attend:  Plausibility: from herbicides to insecticides and beyond .