Abstract = Self Plagiarism?

[1STYEARSLYTHERIN]

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I am a first year Clinical Psychology student. During my master's program I wrote an abstract that was accepted at a conference. Unfortunately, I ended up not being able to go to the conference and present the poster. I withdrew my submission and neither I nor my poster attended.

I am rewriting the abstract and creating a new poster with updated research (this is a literature review) and plan to submit it to a different conference this spring. A fellow student accused me of plagiarism.

Is this plagiarism? I did not think it was, especially since I am rewriting everything. I also thought submitting abstracts to multiple conferences was common practice.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Ollie123]

Fellow student sounds like a dingus. And not even one familiar with the field.

I wouldn't say submitting to multiple conferences is common. Some (many?) do require you to acknowledge that the findings have not previously been presented elsewhere. That said, you withdrew. Unless the abstract was published in a proceedings, I can't conceive of how this would be plagiarism. If I submit an article to a journal, decide to pull it for whatever reason, its not plagiarism to submit it elsewhere and I'm not required to rewrite the entire thing to do so. Even if it was published, I think updated results (as long as meaningfully different and not "I added one more article to a review") are fine to present. That said, my expectations for posters are quite low, so I must admit I don't stress much about these things. If its reasonably scientific and was vaguely worth doing, its probably better than half the posters I see at most conferences.

Semi-related note: Please don't make a habit of submitting and withdrawing. As someone who has been a program chair, it is unbelievably irritating when people submit and then pull it after we go through the trouble of reviewing and getting everything organized into sessions. If you have doubts about whether you can go, don't submit in the first place unless you have a co-author who you know is going and can present in your stead. We've started blacklisting people who do this too often and no longer allow them to present for a window of time (~5 years). Obviously, if this was a one-shot thing and/or exceptional circumstance (family death, incapacitating injury/illness, etc.) that is different. Just don't make it a habit.

 

[1STYEARSLYTHERIN]

Thanks for responding! I was worried about it. I had a family problem that prevented me from attending the conference, and I was very disappointed I was unable to attend. Withdrawing is definitely not something I want to make a habit.

 

[Justanothergrad]

Agreed with Ollie.


As an aside, I've wondered before about how plagiarism works with respect to presented posters and transitions to manuscripts. Is that considered self-plagiarism if you use the same snip-it to describe something? I don't see a conceptual difference, but then again I think a lot of self-plagiarism is silly (particularly methods stuff).

 

[calimich]

Thanks for responding! I was worried about it. I had a family problem that prevented me from attending the conference, and I was very disappointed I was unable to attend. Withdrawing is definitely not something I want to make a habit.

This happened to me during postdoc. I was set to present a paper at a national conference one month after birth of our first baby. We had some minor complications and I had to withdraw.

The following year, before resubmitting (with minor updates) to the same conference I contacted the subcommittee review chair and explained what had happened. Chair said no problem to resubmit and the paper would be subject to another full review. It was accepted (again) and I was able to present.

...and baby is doing great 🙂