Publish, perish, or (self)-plagiarise?

Abstract

Most scholars have at some point during their undergrad studies sat in on a mandatory information session about plagiarism. Depending on the specific programme, it probably contained one or more horror stories of people banished from the university (forever) and never allowed to graduate because they had forgotten to include quotation marks when citing work in their student essays. Armed thus with a healthy fear of stealing other people's work, undergraduate students become graduates. Most then go on to work in practice or in other so-called 'real world' jobs where they discover that copy-and-pasting is a fundamental skill that is both unquestioned and necessary in their daily work.