The Paradox of Self-Plagiarism
Copying one's own work is perceived negatively—except when it isn't.
Posted May 6, 2026 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
Is it possible to steal from yourself? At first blush, the question seems like a blatant contradiction. How can you be accused of taking something that is already yours?
But in a culture that places a premium on originality, any hint of appropriation tends to be viewed with disfavor, and this distaste extends to making use of one’s own prior work.
The phenomenon of self-plagiarism is largely understudied, but a few common elements can be discerned, and they’re worth considering in coming to terms with how and why it occurs.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before
Just as someone might recycle the same joke without realizing they’ve told it before—and to the same person—an artist or writer might regenerate an earlier idea without the glimmer of recognition that would warn them about its provenance. The result is self-plagiarism.
There is some reason to believe that self-plagiarism becomes more common as an artist or writer ages. During a long and prolific career , it becomes almost impossible for them to keep track of everything they have physically produced—or just thought about producing.
Creatives must reject countless ideas to concentrate on the handful that appear to be the most promising. But upon further consideration, some of these discards may be considered worthy of execution, and this process may happen more than once.
Two examples will serve to illustrate this. B. F. Skinner wrote that “One of the more disheartening experiences of old age is discovering that a point you have just made—so significant, so beautifully expressed—was made by you in something you published a long time ago” (Skinner, 1983, p. 242).
This quote appears in “Intellectual Self- management in Old Age,” an article Skinner wrote when he was 79 years old. The famous behaviorist had begun publishing over fifty years earlier, as a graduate student at Harvard, and had penned nearly twenty books and almost 200 articles, chapters, and reviews by the early 1980s. He also understood himself well enough to be painfully aware of the dangers of inadvertent self-plagiarism.
The second example is the case of the cartoonist Charles Schulz, whose accidental copying I describe in my book Strikingly Similar (Kreuz, 2026). Schulz’s career spanned fifty years, during which he executed nearly 18,000 Peanuts cartoon strips. They appeared daily in more than two thousand newspapers.
The four-panel comic that was published on June 11, 1987 shows Snoopy reading a rejection letter from a publisher, imploring him to stop submitting his stories. It concludes with Snoopy reclining under a mailbox and thinking to himself, “I love to hear an editor beg…”.
3,145 strips later, on January 20, 1996, a three-panel comic shows Snoopy reading a rejection letter from a publisher, imploring him to stop submitting his stories. It concludes with Snoopy perched on his doghouse before his typewriter and thinking to himself, “I love to hear them beg…”. When Schulz executed this gag for the second time, he was 73 years old.
Such recycling is problematic, of course, but additional dangers lurk in plagiarising oneself. In a quote attributed to Pablo Picasso, the artist opined that “Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.” In a similar vein, he is believed to have remarked “To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.” Clearly, Picasso was a creative who was alive to the dangers of borrowing from himself.
Repetition affects reputation
In some contexts, however, self-plagiarism is nearly unavoidable. For example, a scientific report might describe a complex methodology used by the paper’s authors—and one employed by the researchers in subsequent work. It may be difficult to paraphrase this procedure without some loss of precision or detail, and so a scientist might—intentionally or inadvertently—describe the technique using identical language in a later article.
The problem is that the researchers’ words are no longer their own: in exchange for publishing the first paper, the authors signed their rights away to the media conglomerate that owns the journal.
Few scientists would begrudge a fellow researcher who copies a couple of sentences from an earlier work to accurately describe a complicated procedure. The problem is that some researchers recycle their ideas, or even entire studies, multiple times. In the academy, where publications are the coin of the realm, this is akin to printing counterfeit money.
It’s unusual for researchers to be called to account for such duplicate publication, but within a given subfield, everyone knows who the transgressors are. They may be seen as unusually prolific scholars, but their professional reputations are inevitably tarnished by engaging in such behavior.
Witnesses for the defense?
It would seem, then, that self-plagiarism is an unalloyed evil, to be avoided at all costs. But is that really true? The practice does have its defenders.
As I describe in Strikingly Similar , Raymond Chandler, the prolific author and screenwriter, was often taken to task for recycling plots, characters, and scenes from his early short stories for use in later, more lucrative projects. In response to one aggrieved correspondent, Chandler wrote “You must pardon me if I find it a little bit ludicrous that you should object to my using what is mine in the way that seems to me most suitable and most convenient” (MacShane, 1981, p. 334).
The last word on the subject goes to Alfred Hitchcock, who was criticized for recycling elements of his films, such as mistaken identities, espionage, or blonde leading ladies. When interviewed in connection with his fifty-third (and final) film, Family Plot , the 76-year-old master of suspense had a simple retort for his critics: “Self-plagiarism is style” (Hodenfield, 1976).
Hodenfield, C. (1976, July 29). Alfred Hitchcock: Muuuurder by the babbling brook. Rolling Stone .
Kreuz, R. (2026). Strikingly similar: Plagiarism and appropriation from Chaucer to chatbots . Cambridge University Press.
MacShane, F. (Ed.). (1981). Selected letters of Raymond Chandler . Columbia University Press.
Skinner, B. F. (1983, March). Intellectual self-management in old age. American Psychologist, 38 , 239-244.
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Roger Kreuz, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at The University of Memphis, where he also serves as an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.