Self-plagiarism

Self-plagiarism is the reuse of your own earlier work, such as a published article, a prior assignment, or a previous thesis chapter, without disclosing that it has appeared before. Although you cannot steal from yourself, the offense lies in misrepresentation: readers and examiners assume the text is original to the current document unless told otherwise. Common forms include recycling coursework into a thesis, duplicate publication, and copying methods sections between papers without acknowledgment.

Doctoral students who publish during their candidature face this issue directly, because thesis chapters often draw on their own published articles. Most universities permit this when it is disclosed, so check your institution's policy on thesis by publication, obtain any required publisher permissions, and state clearly in the thesis which chapters correspond to which published works.