The Text Recycling Research Project (TRRP), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is the first large scale, multi-institutional study of researchers’ reuse of their own textual material in different documents. Publications and practical resources (for researchers and editors) produced from the study contribute to an understanding of problematic practices and guidance for best practices.
The Project’s working definition of text recycling is:
“… the reuse of textual material (prose, visuals, or equations) in a new document where (1) the material in the new document is identical to that of the source (or substantively equivalent in both form and content), (2) the material is not presented in the new document as a quotation (via quotation marks or block indentation), and (3) at least one author of the new document is also an author of the prior document.”
“What is Text Recycling?“
The goals of the study were to survey text recycling in research, learn about beliefs and attitudes, analyze ethical and legal concerns, and create research-based guidelines and policies. Project researchers collected and analyzed text from 16 disciplines across science, technology, engineering, medicine, social sciences, humanities and arts by identifying the top 20 journals in each field. In addition, they worked with representatives from 74 journals, analyzed 316 responses to surveys, and interviewed in detail 20 editors. The first four years of the research were focused on professional research contexts, and now the investigators are examining classroom contexts. Resources for students will be forthcoming.
The study identified 6 misconceptions about text recycling (it’s a form of plagiarism, respectable scientists never do it, it’s unethical, etc.) and further distinguished between types of reuse (developmental, generative, adaptive and duplicate – see Understanding Text Recycling: A guide for researchers, p. 2). TRRP studied language used to describe these practices and offers standardized terms to promote a common understanding.
