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I intend to use my own personal blog to draft some ideas that I would later use as a foundation for my more elaborate papers to be submitted for publication. Am I in danger of self-plagiarism here? On the one hand, it seems that a paper should cite the blog entry it expounds on. On the other hand, citing a personal blog might come off as informal and less serious, especially if the paper essentially duplicates the main results or arguments. Moreover, it makes it more difficult to anonymize one's work for blind review since a single blog post citation stands out.

How should I proceed? Is it a bad idea altogether to have a personal blog as a sketchpad of your yet-unpublished research?

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  • Are you sure that your blog contained original and creative ideas?
    – Buffy
    Commented yesterday
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    What field? "Self-plagiarism" is really just something for undergrad assignments.
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented yesterday
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    @AzorAhai-him- I think self plagiarism applies whenever someone is trying to make old work seem new and original.
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented yesterday
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    @BryanKrause Perhaps, but if I blog about some random US Census analysis I did and then later publish it, I probably wouldn't cite it, even if I lifted language wholesale.
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented yesterday
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    @AzorAhai-him- Agreed, the venue matters. Just like there's no assumption that invited talks listed on a CV involve material entirely separate from that listed as a publication, I don't think there is an expectation that work submitted for publication hasn't been presented in some draft form previously. It would be self plagiarism to try to pass the same analysis as two different ones and therefore get two separate publications out of it, though.
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented yesterday

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I don't think it's necessary to cite your own blog.

You should cite your own published work where relevant (even more important when you have coauthors, because it's their work too!), you need to cite less formal sources when you are taking ideas from others that appeared in those sources.

I would not expect people to cite their own previous presentation of in-progress work; you don't report that this work was presented at the grad student seminar or your lab journal club, for example. I'm in a field where journal publications are primary and conferences are for in-progress/breaking work; if the conference is before the paper submission you don't cite the conference presentation, and that's much more formal than a blog.

You should take care that your blog doesn't end up infringing some license you eventually grant a publisher to your work, but at least in my field these days it would almost certainly be covered under the same carve outs that permit posting preprints.

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  • Very demotivating answer. Fortunately, there are some excellent blogs around, in the field of mathematics, for instance.
    – yarchik
    Commented 6 hours ago
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    @yarchik Why "demotivating"?
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented 6 hours ago
  • Because you cannot mention it as a source of additional information or just a context in scientific papers and because you have to worry about infringing some licenses.
    – yarchik
    Commented 6 hours ago
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    @yarchik I wouldn't go so far as saying you cannot cite your own blog, just that people don't seem to see it as necessary, and also would probably assume you're just trying to promote the blog (like usr1234567 suggests). The statement about infringing licenses is really just something to be careful about when submitting a paper; the vast majority of publishers won't care so it's just a caution to avoid the rare one that does expect a completely exclusive license to the text. Those should probably be avoided anyways just because it's such an archaic position these days.
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented 6 hours ago
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I would not call it a citation, but it is helpful to point out, that it is based on some of your work, already published somewhere else.

  1. Increased transparency.
  2. You might get people interested in your blog.
  3. People following you might not be puzzled why they already know the rough content of your brand new paper.
  4. It does not hurt.

I would add a footnote in the first page or put it into the funding/acknowledge/notes section at the end of the paper.

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