Avoiding plagiarism in an update paper

[samysmiley]

Hi team,
I should probably know how to do this, but I am writing a paper on long-term results from an institutional Phase II trial. The original paper was published in 2013. I am having issues avoiding plagiarism in the materials and methods section, not the entire section, but a several sentences sound very similar. Is this acceptable?

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[seper]

If it is the same journal and mostly the same authors, I would not worry. If you're submitting to a different journal, I would heavily re-write and also cite original paper in methods.

 

[evilbooyaa]

I mean the materials and methods section should hopefully be congruent between the two papers, if the results are based on the same trial, right?

Definitely cite the first paper, and reference it for the sections that you're copying over. Usually you don't have to go as in-depth on the minutiae of the trial (main inclusion/exclusion criteria should be included) on subsequent papers.

 

[Chartreuse Wombat]

There are only so many ways you can state that "overall survival was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method", "Cox proportional hazards" etc. Don't copy the entire section verbatim but don't worry about too much overlap in materials and methods.

 

[Mandelin Rain]

Methods and statistical analyses have been previous published in depth. (xx-cite previous article) Breifly, we... (brief synopsis).