Noether's symmetry transformations for higher-order lagrangians are studied.
A characterization of these transformations is presented, which is useful to
find gauge transformations for higher-order singular lagrangians. The case of
second-order lagrangians is studied in detail. Some examples that illustrate
our results are given; in particular, for the lagrangian of a relativistic
particle with curvature, lagrangian gauge transformations are obtained, though
there are no hamiltonian gauge generators for them.