[adrian_b]

The so-called copyright violation was that Max Planck had published the same article in 2 journals, which was not unusual at that time, because different journals had different readerships, so publishing in more journals was necessary if you wanted to reach more people.

So supposedly he plagiarized himself.

The second retracted article was even less justifiable, because the modern editors or their automated system had believed that 2 articles were the same, but they were not, they only happened to have the same title.

[Ovah]

While commonly taught in academic settings, I disagree with the notion that it's possible to self plagiarize. It's your own words and not stealing from somebody else.

[CrazyStat]

Agreed. The concept of “don’t reuse your old work when you’re supposed to be creating new work” may be valid, especially in training environments, but it shouldn’t be called self-plagiarism or treated like plagiarism.

[rayiner]

It seems like a rule designed by journal editors to protect their turf, or PhD committees to make it easier to count original works towards degree requirements. What could possibly be the justification?

[bluGill]

It also protects readers who may encounter the second years latter and not realize it is the same data and thus they think it is a second study reenforcing something. If they are experts in the field they likely know, but if this is a case where a different field overlaps they will want to have citations without as much knowledge of what is important.

[nbernard]

Indeed. When publishing in a scientific journal, you usually (have to) give them an exclusive licence on your article.

[fabian2k]

it's really a bit of a different concept in scientific publishing, not actually plagiarism. The problematic part is publishing the same results twice, because it increases the burden on reviewers and inflates your publication count. It's also just messier if the results are in multiple places since it makes it harder to follow where those results were used and cited.

[Vespasian]

Also that can't be the whole story because Planck died in 1947 and in Germany (then and now) Copyright ends 70 years after the death of the author.