How to avoid plagiarism in your academic paper?

Whether you’re an university student, or any academic professional, you need to write your own thesis, research paper, assignment, essays, etc. While preparing any academic paper, adding third party sources will increase the legitimacy of your paper. Thus, it is suggested to get help from multiple resources. However, there is a difference between including the resources in your paper and misinterpreting the original ideas as your own in the paper. That’s when the plagiarism is important.

What is plagiarism?

According to the Oxford dictionary , “plagiarize” means:
“to copy another person’s ideas, words or work and pretend that they are your own”

It basically means using other’s ideas without giving proper credit to original author. Sometimes, it may happen accidently, or due to carelessness. Avoiding plagiarism is important because it is considered unethical. Submitting plagiarized paper means stealing someone’s work for your personal gain. Also, writing non-plagiarized work means you have good work ethics and integrity. It says a lot about your behavior and personality. If you’re a grad student you may get good grades.

Here are some of the ways to avoid plagiarism in your paper:

1. Do research well: You need a lot of research for a good paper. And good research also takes time. You need to be focused and organized. Don’t hesitate to visit every sources you can. Verify the facts from multiple sources. Keep in mind that, at the end of research you need to have all the relevant data for your paper. Also, keep all the sources in organized way.
2. Stick to your own creations: The main idea is to present your original idea in the paper. If you have no idea about the subject, get help from others. Ask your professors, friends, classmates, or any experts and make sure you understand the concept. You can seek inspiration from others work but don’t depend on other’s ideas.
3. Quote the quotations: The process of quoting is very simple and easy. It means writing the exactly same statement word-to-word. The copied statement should be enclosed within quotation marks with correct attributes of author. For example: “The total number of minds in the universe is one.” ~ Erwin Schrodinger
4. Cite the resources: If you’re taking help from any resources (website, book, article, journal, etc.), you should cite it in your paper. A good citation includes, name of author, article name, published date, retrieved date, and other citation elements. There many styles of citation you can follow such as APA, MLA, Chicago. You may have to follow the citation style as suggested by the university, or institution. There are third party apps that will cite your paper so that you don’t have to do it manually. I use Citation Machine for all my assignments and papers. It is free to use and get the work done.
5. Paraphrase: It means writing the same statement in your own words without changing its original meaning. The trick is that your writing will convey the message or meaning, without including original statement. For paraphrasing, read and point out the main idea, then rephrase it and present the information in different structure. I personally paraphrase most of the time. And, it works every time flawlessly.
6. Use Turnitin or any third party plagiarism checker: Turnitin is a software that checks your paper for plagiarism and gives originality report. Beside this, there are many third party applications that will check the plagiarism for free. So, before submitting the paper make sure to check for plagiarism. If found, try to minimize it. In most of the educational institutions below 10% plagiarism is acceptable, but it may vary according to your campus, or university. But for research paper, no plagiarism is tolerable, you need to have a 100% original paper.