In this article you will learn “how to avoid plagiarism?” but before that what is more important is to know what plagiarism means. Plagiarism means to copy/steal another person’s language, expressions, thoughts or ideas without giving any credits to the real owner of the content and present them as one’s own.
Plagiarism is very common all over the world that includes a high ratio of school and college students as well as teachers and nowadays bloggers too. Plagiarism in earlier days was not identified as an illegal action but with growing career prospects and increased valuation and demand of writer’s profession, plagiarism is now declared a crime and legal actions can be taken if the person is proven guilty of stealing the content.
To avoid any commends of criminal aspects, it is very important for you to learn, how to avoid plagiarism. If you are thinking how will you get the information to add in your research if plagiarism is strictly prohibited? Well then here is the guide for how to avoid plagiarism.
Everyone does research and reads books and articles to get information especially the students who undergo this process to create presentations, notes and most importantly for academic writing purposes like research papers. It is not wrong to do your research and take the concept of what has been written down or be inspired by, what is wrong is to copy the exact form of content and showing that as your own. Sometimes a little mistake can lead to plagiarism even if it is unintentional and this is why you should read this article to know how to avoid plagiarism. Now that you are clear about what is plagiarism and its guidelines, let’s get straight into how to avoid plagiarism.
Seven Steps on How to avoid plagiarism?
One: Collect the resources
Before you begin writing your research paper or any other source information on the selected topic, collecting the data/resources is the first and the most important step. The more time you give in doing the research, the better your output will be. It is always better to start your research earlier as lack of time may lead you to stress out and it might result in mistakes leading to plagiarism.
Note: After you have collected all the research material, it is very important to mark and save the resources or reference pages you have taken information from.
Two: Parapharising the resource material
After you have collected all the data, it is mandatory to read the content thoroughly as this will build your understanding and it will be easier for you to paraphrase and write your document/research paper in your own words. This will help you in avoiding plagiarism and will give value to your work as it will show the efforts that you have made. This will result in gaining a good position and status.
Make sure you have information from different resources and not from only one piece of reference as it might also result in your work being plagiarized. You need to be good at paraphrasing as just replacing words won’t work and your work will still be plagiarized.
Three: Cite the resources to avoid plagiarism
Citation is one of the techniques to save yourself from plagiarism. First, you need to know what is citation? Citation is giving the reference or credit to the resource you have pulled/collected the data from. Citation makes your work strong as it validates your research and it also helps to avoid plagiarism as it gives the source detail which a reader can look through and also gives the information about the author and its work.
Before you cite the resource, make sure you ask the document formatting guidelines like APA, MLA, Chicago, etc. You might have to do in-text citations if the format requires. While you cite the resource, make sure to be accurate at it because any mistake may lead to plagiarism.
You can also cite your own material that you might have written previously and you might want to quote it again. If you are using your own material that you might have submitted before, it is always better to cite it as at some places self-plagiarism is not acceptable too.
Four: Quote references
This is another way for how to avoid plagiarism and is quite similar to citation. Quoting references will help you in avoiding plagiarism as you will give credit to the resource material you have taken information from. Remember above, I specifically mentioned you to save all the resources you are taking information from? This is the reason why it is important to save references, it is to add them in the reference list at the end of your research paper or side by side with every piece of information you have taken the data from according to what is required by the document format.
Note: If you are quoting the content as it is, it becomes necessary to give reference to credit the owner.
Five: Adding value to the work
Adding value is quite an interesting part of how to avoid plagiarism. Even if you follow all the steps above to avoid plagiarism, you might not be able to provide value to your work. This is why it is important to add your knowledge and learning to your content and not just rely on the resources. Giving your own thoughts and ideas increases the value of your work and minimizes the chances of plagiarism if made accidentally. Adding value stands in support of the efforts you have made in compiling all the information.
Six: Proofread your work
One way for how to avoid plagiarism is proofreading. You might take proofreading as not a necessary part but it has been proved to be the most effective form to avoid plagiarism. When you proofread your work, you do it with an open mind and your creativity plunges and the edits that you make clears out any plagiarism aspects if any. Do not forget to proofread before to went on with submitting your work plus it also helps in adding value to your final output.
Seven: Check your work in plagiarism checker
There are dozens of plagiarism checkers you can find online to check for any plagiarized material you might need to rephrase or cite. This is an easy excess where you can make sure your data is free from plagiarism and can submit your work without any worry. Remember, most of the institute check research papers on plagiarism checkers so it is important for you to be safe and not submit plagiarized work else this may cost you your career and degree.
Another advantage of checking your work on these plagiarism checkers is that these show you the exact source that the resource has been collected. If you accidentally forgot to cite the resource, this will help you in citing by taking you to the source. WriteCheck, Turnitin are two of the plagiarism checkers.
Conclusion: How to Avoid Plagiarism
Now that you know how to avoid plagiarism, I hope you will be able to make your work free from plagiarism and the side tips will help you in adding value to your content. If you found this article helpful, do let us know and share it with others too.
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