8 Simple Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism in your Research Paper

Last updated on June 23rd, 2022 at 04:28 am

The action of copying another person’s work and using it without the permission of the original author or proper citation is considered plagiarism, which explicitly includes copying small parts or the whole of another person’s work while imagining that this is your work.

Copying small parts of another person’s work using fake or without citation, i.e., missing quotations and citation, misguided or false references, paraphrasing or changing most of the words is also a part of plagiarism and not allowed in any case.

Plagiarism has real legal implications. While the idea of writing themselves are not protected by copyright, the visual presentation of a thought which is made naturally falls under copyright law.

If the content is copied sensibly then a small part or idea can be copied without the requirement for permission of the original author.

But if used sensibly, the first source should be indicated by adding the reference in your content about the copied content.

For example, if you are using the quotes, research material, or a fact of somebody else then you can cite the original author and his published content.

Using plagiarism checker for verifying

Before discussing the ways of avoiding plagiarism in your content, you should know how to check plagiarism.

If you are reading the content through the internet then you should consider checking the content through the plagiarism checker to verify whether your wording is different from others.

If it’s the same, don’t submit the research as it might get rejected instead go for changing the content to make it unique.

To avoid the case of plagiarism, you can easily follow the below-mentioned 8 tips for avoiding any type of plagiarism in your content.

1. Consider the reason for composing a plagiarism

First of all, you should consider why you have composed the plagiarized writing usually because there are so many internet articles about your topic but it’s not allowed to use any of them.

To use some parts, you can go for writing the content with attribution to the original published source. However, you should consider knowing the facts but write your ideas.

Using the words directly in your research would be plagiarism but if you just add the facts with the quotation will avoid it.

2. Avoid duplicate holding

Avoid gathering data from different papers. It is better that you should duplicate the thought of another person in your own words with the process of paraphrasing and give a reference to the first source.

Then again, in case you need to explicitly quote the first creator, quickly embed the quotations around text that you duplicate stuck behind the reference.

3. Use short quotes in your research

Make sure you do not quote entire paragraphs. Limit quotations to a few key sentences. Now, it doesn’t mean that you are quoting small sentences and include a lot of sentences throughout the content.

This will lead your content towards plagiarism. You can use up to 5 quotation sentences with references in your research material and this way, you can include someone’s content.

Usually, the type of citation depends on the type of writing and the purpose of the writing. But the type is not concerned with important because you can use any of the citations if there is no requirement.

4. Paraphrase the original content

Although paraphrasing is not considered good practice for making your content unique but in case, there are just a few lines or a paragraph, you can utilize it.

Paraphraser is an online tool that can help you in rewording your content of research and make it unique compared to other published articles.

Paraphrasing is possible with online tools which are offered by a wide variety of websites. You can easily use them for free and avoid any penalty from the submission platform.

5. Permission from the copyright’s holder

If you duplicate small parts of a work for exceptional use, such as a brief statement or remarks, and you do not know whether this is reasonable use, it is wiser to contact the copyright holder to obtain composed consent.

You can outreach the original author or the web owner that is publishing the content through email and ask for writing in your research.

Through mentioning the mentioning of reference, there are more chances that you would get permission.

Some of the top websites also have a special page or form where you can request for using their content for your purpose.

6. Avoid repetition of images, videos, and other content

If you wish to re-use another person’s representation in your research, survey paper, or any other type of writing, make sure you obtain the composed consent of the copyright holder.

Many copyright holders will allow you to use the given content again and again with little effort, given the low chance that you will obtain the first source of the images adequately and make it high quality.

Follow the copyright holder’s instructions as to the best wording that can be used for assignment.

7. Reading more and more content

When you are researching for writing then you should consider reading more and more content for making a video range of information about the topic.

In this regard, if you just read a single copy from the internet and then starts writing then it might cause plagiarism in your writing.

To avoid this, try to read more and more articles for a better understanding of the topic, and then you can easily generate valuable and unique content.

Remember, copying the thoughts of someone and write in your wording is also considered plagiarism in most cases. But if you just write some of the common facts then it can be declared as a unique article.

8. Keep away from SELF-PLAGIARISM

If you reuse your work or imagery from the past in new research, this often leads to self-plagiarism.

Usually, you surrender the copyright as you submit or publish your work to an institute or over the internet, with the goal that self-plagiarism often constitutes copyright infringement.

Regardless of the possible infringement of copyright, it is not acceptable practice to resubmit material that is already available.