What is plagiarism
Plagiarism involves the use of someone else’s passages, ideas, or even creative work without citations i.e. when students fail to acknowledge their sources. When we refer to other people’s work we should acknowledge that we have borrowed ideas from other people to give them credit. Any writing that has borrowed ideas from other sources and is not acknowledged is plagiarized.
How to recognize plagiarism
One can recognize plagiarism if for instance a writer has only paraphrased a few words in the original passage or has simply re-ordered the words in the original sentence without acknowledging his/her source. For example, the passage written by the student has been plagiarized. This is because the student has only left out some words from the original passage and has used the same words that were in the source. The two sentences with clear evidence of plagiarism are: “… the information can nevertheless be warped-by ending a study because the results are disappointing; changing rules mid-study, not trying to publish negative results; publicizing preliminary results even with and less positive results in hand; skimming over or even not acknowledging drawbacks; and, especially, casting the results in the light or, as scientists say, buffing them.” This sentence has been plagiarized because the student has only paraphrased a few words and re-ordered others. The same case applies to this sentence, “Although biomedical research incorporates rigorous scientific rules and is often critically scrutinized by peers, the information…” The student has only paraphrased a few words from the original sentence.
How to avoid plagiarism
Throughout school, we get information from other people and always use it when making notes or use this information to do our assignments. How then can we avoid plagiarism?
- We should always use quotation marks when we are writing directly from a book/text. This shows that we have acknowledged that we have borrowed those particular sentences from someone else i.e. we have used the information word for word.
- Always paraphrase but do not just re-order the words or change just a few words from the original documents. We should always use our own words.
- Always counter-check the paraphrases to make sure that they are not the same as the original text and to ensure that the information is correct.
- Acknowledge the source of your information by indicating where you got your information from.
References
John, Santrock. (2006). Your Guide to College Success: Strategies for achieving your goals. New York: Thomson Wadsworth.