I have recently completed a dissertation and have been encouraged to publish the work.
My dilemma is that I find it quite difficult (and painfully tedious) to rewrite the same thing couched in new language. Whereas I don't plan to copy and paste the whole thing verbatim, it would be nice to take chunks of the original text here and there, and proceed to break-apart, edit, and reassemble the bits and pieces to create a newly condensed version of the dissertation.
How does one go about this whilst avoiding self-plagiarising?
It would seem sensible to make generous reference to the fact that the paper is derived from the dissertation. However, does one really have to effectively rewrite everything and reference every last page and figure from the original text?
Thanks.
Answer
The dissertation is not a published work in the same sense as a journal or conference paper. It is normal for a recent graduate to take large chunks of their thesis, with minimal or no modification, and use the excerpts in more formal publications. You do not need to worry about self plagiarism in this context.
The copying often goes the other way as well. If you already have published papers when it's time to write your dissertation, you may take large chunks of the published papers and reuse them in the dissertation. In some fields (mathematics or theoretical physics, for example), this is quite commonplace. People talk about "stapling your papers together" to make a thesis. In reality, there is more to it than that. Introductory and concluding material are needed, but many theses have chapters that are based on published manuscripts, with relatively little editing.
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