How to Avoid Plagiarism

Plagiarism as an offence

Whether intentional or unintentional, plagiarism is a violated offence. All students are expected to study, learn, research, and write the paper with their understanding. They have to abide by the norms and submit their paper with sheer honesty in their academic career. Stealing another person’s content and passing it as one’s own may end a student’s academic career and may even land him up behind bars. While copying content may not be a criminal offence, the copyright issue can still lead to charges. It is a dire need for the scholars to avoid using plagiarised content and the team of PhD assistants at Plagiarism Removal helps in avoiding copied content from the research work. The user will never know that the consequences of using another person’s content can be personal, professional, ethical, or even legal.

How to avoid plagiarism

  • 01

    Understand the context

    Understand the idea of the reference source well before you use the content. With a comprehensive understanding of the text, you will be able to paraphrase it correctly and without copying the content word-to-word as it is the best way to avoid plagiarism. When you paraphrase the text, it means that you understand the context of the source well and restates the original idea in your own words, citing the name of the author and his work.

  • 02

    Understand what needs to cited

    You may not wish to be one of those who plagiarise content, deliberately or accidentally; it is always better to cite the text than being accused of copying it. However, you must know what to cite and what to not. While the reader will know that a universal fact will not be your original idea, it will be equally tough for you to find the primary source. So, understand the context and its need to be cited, as the plagiarism removal tools will not guide you with it.

  • 03

    Quote it

    When it is too hard to paraphrase the words, quote them in your literature. While quoting the words of a researcher, use the exact words because nobody likes to be misinterpreted. A scholar should be able to paraphrase texts longer than 40 words because it shows that he worked hard on the understanding of the text and using the sources. Using too many quotes may seem like lack of knowledge and interest in the topic, with difficulty in removal of plagiarised content.

  • 04

    Manage sources

    Note-taking should be taken seriously, and the scholar must list the sources when they are taking notes. Note the exact words of the author or speaker, to vindicate their ideas and content. Manage the citations properly with every reference; the scholar is using to cite it wherever needed and have a reference page for your research paper to avoid forgery of the content. Double check your bibliography to make sure that you did not miss any source.

  • 05

    Use plagiarism checking tools

    Run plagiarism checks in the end as your final resort to find any uncited content. Using a tool is one of the most common technique to avoid plagiarism as there are copious free and paid tools for the scholars. Although one can not count on either of the tools because checking the work themselves is equally important to remove the copied content from the research. Review your literature closely to ensure that each of the quote or rephrased work is cited in the correct format.

Some tips to follow to avoid piracy of the content

Use a wide range of sources

It is vital for you to read and compile a wide range of sources in the literature. Using a wide range of literature will prevent you from using a single source and write your research on the basis of it. With vast literature, you will have a more researched paper as you develop more ideas with multiple reference papers, and prohibit yourself from using another author’s work.

Develop your ideas

Writing research on the basis of your ideas, helps you to be clear of plagiarism. Your thoughts and ideas in research are necessary to bring originality to the research for it to contribute to the academic field. Although you must make sure that your argument is backed up by literature, that is well cited. Your idea will give a new direction to the research and the existing studies.

Keep a track of your notes

We all make sure to write everything important and keep the notes ready for our research but forgets to take note of the source of the notes. Not only just the words but also the ideas need to be cited. Failure to cite the literature will result in plagiarism of content. You just don’t have to cite when you are using quotes but source it in the bibliography section for generating the ideas as well.

Do not forget the quotation marks

Mostly the literature has to be paraphrased or summarised. But if you are using verbatim, then do not forget to use the quotation marks. The scholar should not quote longer sentences, because they can be comprehended and paraphrased in your language. The content should be used word to word in the quotes to avoid misinterpretation.

Plagiarism Check

Plagiarism is the act of stealing a person’s work. Whether it is an essay, thesis or dissertation, any work or a part of work that is found to be copied from another source is considered to have plagiarism issues.