# Patterns of Text Reuse in a Scientific Corpus

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2716 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.2716/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Dec 2014.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Reception Reader: Exploring Text Reuse in Early Modern British Publications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04084/) (2023)
- [SMAuC -- The Scientific Multi-Authorship Corpus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02477/) (2022)
- [Quantitative Intertextuality from the Digital Humanities Perspective: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27045/) (2025)
- [STEREO: Scientific Text Reuse in Open Access Publications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11800/) (2021)
- [Textarium: Entangling Annotation, Abstraction and Argument](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13191/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We consider the incidence of text "reuse" by researchers, via a systematic pairwise comparison of the text content of all articles deposited to arXiv.org from 1991--2012. We measure the global frequencies of three classes of text reuse, and measure how chronic text reuse is distributed among authors in the dataset. We infer a baseline for accepted practice, perhaps surprisingly permissive compared with other societal contexts, and a clearly delineated set of aberrant authors. We find a negative correlation between the amount of reused text in an article and its influence, as measured by subsequent citations. Finally, we consider the distribution of countries of origin of articles containing large amounts of reused text.