How to Avoid Plagiarism in Academic Writing?
Plagiarism is a very unethical practice of using ideas or certain words belonging to a researcher without acknowledging them in a proper manner. Plagiarism is precarious and something that everyone need to avoid whether you are writing a research paper, essay, blog post or an article. However, plagiarism becomes more of a problem when you are engaged in academic writing. It’s relatively easy to find material for your research paper, however adding it to your paper without having fallen into the trap of plagiarism can be really tough.
Being accused of plagiarism cannot just destroy the entire credibility of the work you may have done with a lot of effort but your integrity as well. While there are those who plagiarize with a malicious intent, merely copy-pasting some stuff from internet, can land you in trouble.
However, circumnavigating you way around a few techniques can save you from a lot of trouble and minimize the risk of being engaged in unintentional plagiarism.
Here are a few of them:
1- Paraphrase:
Paraphrasing is the act of re-producing in your own words. You must paraphrase carefully, by altering the structure of the sentences, undertones of the text and the way it looks like. A paraphrase is usually the same length as the source text. The key is to keep the meaning, however changing the wording.
2- Quotation:
Quoting is another excellent strategy for plagiarism avoidance.Whenever you quote from a source, make sure that you are using the quote exactly the way it appears. However, make sure that quoting does not go beyond 40 words. Misquoting will cause problems. If you intend on making your essay longer but have run out of things to say or points to elaborate, you can rely on quoting experts.
3- Referencing:
Referencing stands to be one of the most effective methods and is an age old technique used to counter plagiarism. Include a reference page for the cited works, otherwise also known as bibliography. However, this page must adhere to the formatting guidelines as indicated by the institution you are submitting it to. This information needs to be precise and include necessary details like author, date of publication etc. The key in any case is to give credit through referencing wherever it’s due.
4- Use plagiarism checking tools:
You must try your best to produce original content in your literature review section, however if you still feel that you have not done a good enough job at ensuring originality, there are plenty of free and paid plagiarism checking tools available online, for instance, iThenticate,Grammarlyand WriteCheck etc.
In a nutshell, these are some of the methods you can adopt to make your work, plagiarism free and ensure originality. Also, ensure that you have carefully analyzed the whole content and checked it for errors arising out of spelling and grammar mistakes, before you submit it.
5- Citing Yourself:
Most students are not aware that they cannot use even their own content, without citing themselves, since reproducing their own previously used content, amounts to self-plagiarism, so it’s best to treat the text not as your own but as if a third person has written it and cite it accordingly. Self-plagiarism is not acceptable in academic circles and must be restricted to an extent.
Moreover, do not take plagiarism lightly. It could as well mean the loss of your academic degree or even career!It is best to follow the example of professional academic writers and see what they are up to. This approach can lead you to learn how to produce plagiarism free work.
