Selective mapping (SLM) is an attractive method to reduce the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) without causing any signal distortion in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The main drawback of this technique is the requirement of sending side information (SI) to the receiver for each data block which results in huge bandwidth and power overheads. Also, it may degrade the bit error rate (BER) performance of the system due to the corruption of SI over the channel. In this paper, we propose a novel technique to reduce PAPR in single input single output and single input multiple output OFDM systems using Hadamard code-based SLM. The proposed method eliminates the need for explicit SI resulting in better bandwidth and power efficiency. The basic idea is to embed the SI of each data block within the data block itself at some specific locations using special multiplying sequences. Furthermore, the proposed scheme yields superior PAPR reduction when compared to that of the conventional SLM for an equivalent system complexity. Simulation studies show that the receiver achieves a better BER performance with the proposed technique as compared to the conventional SLM. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media New York.