plagiarism in college research paper

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Factors influencing plagiarism in higher education: A comparison of German and Slovene students

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Personnel and Education, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Maribor, Kranj, Slovenia

Roles Funding acquisition, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia; School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Economics and Law, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt, Germany

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft

Affiliation Department of Methodology, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Maribor, Kranj, Slovenia

Roles Formal analysis, Resources, Writing – original draft

Roles Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

• Eva Jereb, 
• Matjaž Perc, 
• Barbara Lämmlein, 
• Janja Jerebic, 
• Marko Urh, 
• Iztok Podbregar, 
• Polona Šprajc

• Published: August 10, 2018
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252
• Reader Comments

Over the past decades, plagiarism has been classified as a multi-layer phenomenon of dishonesty that occurs in higher education. A number of research papers have identified a host of factors such as gender, socialisation, efficiency gain, motivation for study, methodological uncertainties or easy access to electronic information via the Internet and new technologies, as reasons driving plagiarism. The paper at hand examines whether such factors are still effective and if there are any differences between German and Slovene students’ factors influencing plagiarism. A quantitative paper-and-pencil survey was carried out in Germany and Slovenia in 2017/2018 academic year, with a sample of 485 students from higher education institutions. The major findings of this research reveal that easy access to information-communication technologies and the Web is the main reason driving plagiarism. In that regard, there are no significant differences between German and Slovene students in terms of personal factors such as gender, motivation for study, and socialisation. In this sense, digitalisation and the Web outrank national borders.

Citation: Jereb E, Perc M, Lämmlein B, Jerebic J, Urh M, Podbregar I, et al. (2018) Factors influencing plagiarism in higher education: A comparison of German and Slovene students. PLoS ONE 13(8): e0202252. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252

Editor: Andreas Wedrich, Medizinische Universitat Graz, AUSTRIA

Received: May 21, 2018; Accepted: July 6, 2018; Published: August 10, 2018

Copyright: © 2018 Jereb et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: MP was supported by the Slovenian Research Agency (Grant Nos. J1-7009 and P5-0027), http://www.arrs.gov.si/ . The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Many of those who teach in higher education have encountered the phenomenon of plagiarism as a form of dishonesty in the classroom. According to the Oxford English Dictionary online 2017, the term plagiarism is defined as ‘the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own’. Perrin, Larkham and Culwin define plagiarism as the use of an author's words, ideas, reflections and thoughts without proper acknowledgment of the author [ 1 – 3 ]. Koul et al. define plagiarism as a form of cheating and theft since in cases of plagiarism one person takes credit for another person’s intellectual work [ 4 ]. According to Fishman, ‘Plagiarism occurs when someone: 1) uses words, ideas, or work products; 2) attributable to another identifiable person or source; 3) without attributing the work to the source from which it was obtained; 4) in a situation in which there is a legitimate expectation of original authorship; 5) in order to obtain some benefit, credit, or gain which need not be monetary’ [ 5 ]. But why do students use someone else's words or ideas and pass them on as their own? Which factors influence this behaviour? That is the main focus of our research, to discover the factors influencing plagiarism and see if there are any differences between German and Slovene students.

Koul et al. pointed out that particular circumstances or events should be considered in the definition of plagiarism since plagiarism may vary across cultures and societies [ 4 ]. Hall has described Eastern cultures (the Middle East, Asia, Africa, South America) and Western cultures (North America and much of Europe) using the idea of ‘context’, which refers to the framework, background, and surrounding circumstances in which an event takes place [ 6 ]. Western societies are generally ‘low context’ societies. In other words, people in Western societies play by external rules (e.g., honour codes against plagiarism), and decisions are based on logic, facts, and directness. Eastern societies are generally ‘high context’ societies, meaning that people in Eastern societies put strong emphasis on relational concerns, and decisions are based on personal relationships. Nisbett et al. have suggested that differences between Westerners and Easterners may arise from people being socialised into different worldviews, cognitive processes and habits of mind [ 7 ]. In Germany, there has been ongoing reflection on academic plagiarism and other dishonest research practices since the late 19th century [ 8 ]. However, according to Ruiperez and Garcia-Cabrero, in Germany, 2011 became a landmark year with the appearance of an extensive public debate about plagiarism—brought back into the limelight because of an investigation into the incumbent German Defence Minister’s doctoral thesis [ 9 ]. Aside from the numerous cases of plagiarism detected in academic work since 2011, several initiatives have enriched the debate on academic plagiarism. For example, the development of a consolidated cooperative textual research methodology using a specific Wiki called ‘VroniPlag’ has made Germany one of the most advanced European countries in terms of combating these practices. Similar to Germany, Slovenia has also paid increased attention to plagiarism in recent years. The debate about plagiarism became public after it was discovered that certain Slovene politicians had resorted to academic plagiarism. Today, universities in Slovenia use a variety of tools (Turnitin, plagiarism plug-ins for Moodle, plagiarisma.net, etc.) in order to detect plagiarism. The focus of this research is to investigate the factors influencing plagiarism and if there are any differences between Slovene and German students’ factors influencing plagiarising. The research questions (RQ) of the study were divided into three groups:

• RQ group 1: Which factors influence plagiarism in higher education?
• RQ group 2: Are there any differences between male and female students regarding factors influencing plagiarism? Are the factors influencing plagiarism connected with specific areas of study (technical sciences, social sciences, natural sciences)?
• RQ group 3: Does the students’ motivation affect their factors influencing plagiarism? Are there any differences between male and female students regarding this?

In addition, for all three research question groups, we also wanted to know if there were any differences between the German and Slovene students.

Theoretical background

Plagiarism is a highly complex phenomenon and, as such, it is likely that there is no single explanation for why individuals engage in plagiarist behaviours [ 10 ]. The situation is often complex and multi-dimensional, with no simple cause-and-effect link [ 11 ].

McCabe et al. noted that individual factors (e.g. gender, average grade, work ethic, self-esteem), institutional factors (e.g., faculty response to cheating, sanction threats, honour codes) and contextual factors (e.g., peer cheating behaviours, peer disapproval of cheating behaviours, perceived severity of penalties for cheating) influence cheating behaviour [ 12 ]. Giluk and Postlethwaite also related individual characteristics and situational factors to cheating—individual characteristics such as gender, age, ability, personality, and extracurricular involvement; and situational factors such as honour codes, penalties, and risk of detection [ 13 ]. The study of Jereb et al. also revealed that specific individual characteristics pertaining to men and women influence plagiarism [ 14 ]. Newstead et al. suggested that gender differences (plagiarism is more frequent among boys), age differences (plagiarism is more frequent among younger students), and academic performance differences (plagiarism is more frequent among lower performers) are specific factors for plagiarism [ 15 ]. Gerdeman stated that the following five student characteristic variables are frequently related to the incidence of dishonest behaviour: academic achievement, age, social activities, study major, and gender [ 16 ].

One of the factors influencing plagiarism could be that students do not have a clear understanding of what constitutes plagiarism and how it can be avoided [ 17 , 18 ]. According to Hansen, students don’t fully understand what constitutes plagiarism [ 19 ]. Park states genuine lack of understanding as one of the reasons for plagiarism. Some students plagiarise unintentionally, when they are not familiar with proper ways of quoting, paraphrasing, citing and referencing and/or when they are unclear about the meaning of ‘common knowledge’ and the expression ‘in their own words’ [ 11 ].

Furthermore, it is important to remember that, in our current day and age, information is easily accessed through new technologies. In addition, as Koul et al. have stated, the belief that we as people have greater ownership of information than we have paid for may influence attitudes towards plagiarism [ 4 ]. Many other authors have also stated that the Internet has increased the potential for plagiarism, since information is easily accessed through new technologies [ 14 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. Indeed, the Internet grants easy access to an enormous amount of knowledge and learning materials. This provides an opportunity for students to easily cut, paste, download and plagiarise information [ 21 , 23 ]. Online resources are available 24/7 and enable a flood of information, which is also constantly updated. Given students' ease of access to both digital information and sophisticated digital technologies, several researchers have noted that students may be more likely to ignore academic ethics and to engage in plagiarism than would otherwise be the case [ 24 ].

In a study of the level of plagiarism in higher education, Tayraukham found that students with performance goals were more likely to indulge in plagiarism behaviours than students who wanted to achieve mastery of a particular subject [ 25 ]. Most of the students plagiarised in order to provide the right responses to study questions, with the ultimate goal of getting higher grades—rather than gaining expertise in their subjects of study. Anderman and Midgley observed that a relatively higher performance-oriented classroom climate increases cheating behaviour; while a higher mastery-oriented classroom climate decreases cheating behaviour [ 26 ]. Park also claimed that one of the reasons that students plagiarise is efficiency gain, that is, that students plagiarise in order to get a better grade and save time [ 11 ]. Songsriwittaya et al. stated that what motivates students to plagiarise is the goal of getting good grades and comparing their success with that of their peers [ 27 ]. The study of Ramzan et al. also revealed that the societal and family pressures of getting higher grades influence plagiarism [ 21 ]. Such pressures sometimes push students to indulge in unfair means such as plagiarism as a shortcut to performing better in exams or producing a certain number of publications. Engler et al. and Hard et al. tended to agree with this idea, stating that plagiarism arises out of social norms and peer relationships [ 28 , 29 ]. Park also stated that there are many calls on students’ time, including peer pressure for maintaining an active social life, commitment to college sports and performance activities, family responsibilities, and pressure to complete multiple work assignments in short amounts of time [ 11 ]. Šprajc et al. agreed that students are under an enormous amount of pressure from family, peers, and instructors, to compete for scholarships, admissions, and, of course, places in the job market [ 30 ]. This affects students’ time management and can lead to plagiarism. In addition to time pressures, Franklin-Stokes and Newstead found another six major reasons given by students to explain cheating behaviours: the desire to help a friend, a fear of failure, laziness, extenuating circumstances, the possibility of reaping a monetary reward, and because ‘everybody does it’ [ 31 ].

Another common reason for plagiarism is the poor preparation of lecture notes, which can lead to the inadequate referencing of texts [ 32 ]. Šprajc et al. found out that too many assignments given within a short time frame pushes students to plagiarise [ 30 ]. Poor explanations, bad teaching, and dissatisfaction with course content can also drive students to plagiarise. Park exposed students’ attitudes towards teachers and classes [ 11 ]. Some students cheat because they have negative attitudes towards assignments and tasks that teachers believe to have meaning but that they don’t [ 33 ]. Cheating tends to be more common in classes where the subject matter seems unimportant or uninteresting to students, or where the teacher seemed disinterested or permissive [ 16 ].

Park mentioned students’ academic skills (researching and writing skills, knowing how to cite, etc.) as another reason for plagiarism [ 11 ]. New students and international students whose first language is not English need to transition to the research culture by understanding the necessity of doing research, and the practice and skills required to do so, in order to avoid unintentional plagiarism [ 21 ]. According to Park to some students, plagiarism is a tangible way of showing dissent and expressing a lack of respect for authority [ 11 ]. Some students deny to themselves that they are cheating or find ways of legitimising their behaviour by passing the blame on to others. Other factors influencing plagiarising are temptation and opportunity. It is both easier and more tempting for students to plagiarise since information has become readily accessible with the Internet and Web search tools, making it faster and easier to find information and copy it. In addition, some people believe that since the Internet is free for all and a public domain, copying from the Internet requires no citation or acknowledgement of the source [ 34 ]. To some students, the benefits of plagiarising outweigh the risks, particularly if they think there is little or no chance of getting caught and there is little or no punishment if they are indeed caught [ 35 ].

One of the factors influencing plagiarism could be also higher institutions’ attitudes towards plagiarism, that is, whether they have clear policies regarding plagiarism and its consequences or not. The effective communication of policies, increased student awareness of penalties, and enforcement of these penalties tend to reduce dishonest behaviour [ 36 ]. Ramzan et al. [ 21 ] mentioned the research of Razera et al., who found that Swedish students and teachers need training to understand and avoid plagiarism [ 37 ]. In order to deal with plagiarism, teachers want and need a clear set of policies regarding detection tools, and extensive training in the use of detection software and systems. According to Ramzan et al., Dawson and Overfield determined that students are aware that plagiarism is bad but that they are not clear on what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it [ 21 , 38 ]. In Dawson and Overfield’s study, students required teachers to also observe the rules set up to avoid plagiarism and be consistently kept aware of plagiarism—in order to enforce the university’s resolve to control this academic misconduct.

According to this literature review and our experiences in higher education teaching, we determined that the following factors influence plagiarism: students’ individual factors, information-communication technologies (ICT) and the Web, regulation, students’ academic skills, teaching factors, different forms of pressure, student pride, and other reasons. The statements used in the instrument we developed, and the results of our research are presented in the following chapters.

Participants

The paper-and-pencil survey was carried out in the 2017/18 academic year at the University of Maribor in Slovenia and at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences in Germany. Students were verbally informed of the nature of the research and invited to freely participate. They were assured of anonymity. The study was approved by the Ethical Committee for Research in Organizational Sciences at Faculty of Organizational Sciences University of Maribor.

A sample of 191 students from Slovenia (SLO) (99 males (51.8%) and 92 (48.2%) females) and 294 students from Germany (GER) (115 males (39.1%) and 171 (58.2%) females) participated in this study. Slovene students’ ages ranged from 19 to 36 years, with a mean of 21 years and 1 months ( M = 21 . 12 and SD = 1 . 770 ) and German students’ ages ranged from 18 to 40 years, with a mean of 22 years and 10 months ( M = 22 . 84 and SD = 3 . 406 ). About half (49.2%) of the Slovene participants were social sciences students, 34.9% were technical sciences students, and 15.9% were natural sciences students. More than half (58.5%) of the German participants were social sciences students, 32% were technical sciences students and 2% were natural sciences students. More than half of the Slovene students (53.4%) attended blended learning, and 46.6% attended classic learning. The majority of German students (87.8%) attended classic learning, and 6.8% attended blended learning. More than half of the Slovene students (61.6%) were working at the time of the study, and 39.8% of all participants had scholarships. In addition, in Germany, more than half the students (65.0%) were working at the time of the study, but only 10.2% of all the German participants had scholarships. More than two thirds (68.9%) of the Slovene students were highly motivated for study and 31.1% less so; 32.6% of the students spend 2 or fewer hours per day on the Internet, 41.6% spend between 2 and 5 hours on the Internet, and 25.8% spend 5 or more hours on the Internet per day. Also, more than two thirds (73.1%) of the German students were highly motivated for study and 23.8% less so; 33.3% of the students spend 2 or fewer hours per day on the Internet, 32.3% spend between 2 and 5 hours on the Internet, and 27.9% spend 5 or more hours on the Internet per day. The general data can be seen in S1 Table .

The questionnaire contained closed questions referring to: (i) general/individual data (gender, age, area of study, method of study, working status, scholarship, motivation for study, average time spent on the internet), and factors influencing plagiarism (ii) ICT and Web, (iii) regulation, (iv) academic skills, (v) teaching factors, (vi) pressure, (vii) pride, (viii) other reasons. The items in the groups (ii) to (viii) used a 5-point Likert scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5), with larger values indicating stronger orientation.

The statements used in the survey were as follows:

• 1.1 It is easy for me to copy/paste due to contemporary technology
• 1.2 I do not know how to cite electronic information
• 1.3 It is hard for me to keep track of information sources on the web
• 1.4 I can easily access research material using the Internet
• 1.5 Easy access to new technologies
• 1.6 I can easily translate information from other languages
• 1.7 I can easily combine information from multiple sources
• 1.8 It is easy to share documents, information, data
• 2.1 There is no teacher control on plagiarism
• 2.2 There is no faculty regulation against plagiarism
• 2.3 There is no university regulation against plagiarism
• 2.4 There are no penalties
• 2.5 There are no honour codes relating to plagiarism
• 2.6 There are no electronic systems of control
• 2.7 There is no systematic tracking of violators
• 2.8 I will not get caught
• 2.9 I am not aware of penalties
• 2.10 I do not understand the consequences
• 2.11 The penalties are minor
• 2.12 The gains are higher than the losses
• 3.1 I run out of time
• 3.2 I am unable to cope with the workload
• 3.3 I do not know how to cite
• 3.4 I do not know how to find research materials
• 3.5 I do not know how to research
• 3.6 My reading comprehension skills are weak
• 3.7 My writing skills are weak
• 3.8 I sometimes have difficulty expressing my own ideas
• 4.1 The tasks are too difficult
• 4.2 Poor explanation—bad teaching
• 4.3 Too many assignments in a short amount of time
• 4.4 Plagiarism is not explained
• 4.5 I am not satisfied with course content
• 4.6 Teachers do not care
• 4.7 Teachers do not read students' assignments
• 5.1 Family pressure
• 5.2 Peer pressure
• 5.3 Under stress
• 5.4 Faculty pressure
• 5.5 Money pressure
• 5.6 Afraid to fail
• 5.7 Job pressure
• 6.1 I do not want to look stupid in front of peers
• 6.2 I do not want to look stupid in front of my professor
• 6.3 I do not want to embarrass my family
• 6.4 I do not want to embarrass myself
• 6.5 I focus on how my competences will be judged relative to others
• 6.6 I am focused on learning according to self-set standards
• 6.7 I fear asking for help
• 6.8 My fear of performing poorly motivates me to plagiarise
• 6.9 Assigned academic work will not help me personally/professionally
• 7.1 I do not want to work hard
• 7.2 I do not want to learn anything, just pass
• 7.3 My work is not good enough
• 7.4 It is easier to plagiarise than to work
• 7.5 To get a better/higher mark (score)

All statistical tests were performed with SPSS at the significance level of 0.05. Parametric tests (Independent–Samples t-Test and One-Way ANOVA) were selected for normal and near-normal distributions of the responses. Nonparametric tests (Mann-Whitney Test, Kruskal-Wallis Test, Friedman’s ANOVA) were used for significantly non-normal distributions. Chi-Square Test was used to investigate the independence between variables.

The average values for the groups (and standard deviations) of the responses referring to the factors influencing plagiarism can be seen in Table 1 (descriptive statistics for all statements can be seen in S2 Table ), shown separately for Slovene and German students. An Independent Samples t-test was conducted to obtain the average values of the responses, and thus evaluate for which statements these differed significantly between the Slovene and German students.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.t001

According to the Friedman’s ANOVA (see Table 2 ), the Slovene students’ factors influencing plagiarism can be formed into four homogeneous subsets, where in each subset, the distributions of the average values for the responses are not significantly different. At the top of the list is the existence of ICT and the Web (group 1). The second subset consists of teaching factors (group 4). The third subset is composed of academic skills, other reasons, and pride, in order from highest to lowest (groups 3, 7 and 6). The fourth subset is composed of other reasons, pride, pressure, and regulation, respectively (groups 7, 6, 5 and 2).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.t002

For the Slovene students, ICT and the Web were detected as the dominant factors influencing plagiarism and, as such, we investigated them in greater detail. A Friedman Test ( Chi-Square = 7.180, p = .066) confirmed that the distributions of the responses to the statements 1.1, 1.4, 1.5 and 1.8—those with the highest sample means—are not significantly different. Consequently, the average values (means) of the responses to the statements 1.1, 1.4, 1.5 and 1.8 are not significantly different. The average values of the responses for all the other statements (1.7, 1.6, 1.2, and 1.3 listed in the descending order of sample means) are significantly lower. A Mann-Whitney Test showed that there is no statistically significant difference between the distributions of the responses in the group of ICT and Web reasons considering gender (male, female) and motivation for study (lower, higher). For statement 1.2, a Kruskal-Wallis Test ( Chi-Square = 7.466, p = .024) confirmed that there are different distributions for the responses when the area of study is considered (technical sciences, social sciences, natural sciences).

According to the Friedman’s ANOVA (see Table 3 ), the German students’ factors influencing plagiarism can be formed into five homogeneous subsets, where in each subset, the distributions of the average values for the responses are not significantly different. At the top of the list is the existence of ICT and the Web (group 1). The second subset is composed of pressure and pride, in order from highest to lowest (groups 5 and 6). The third subset consists of pride, teaching factors and other reasons, respectively (groups 6, 4 and 7). The fourth subset is composed of teaching factors, other reasons and academic skills, in order from highest to lowest (groups 4, 7 and 3). Finally, the last subset consists of regulation (group 2).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.t003

Just like the Slovene students, for the German students ICT and the Web were detected as the dominant factors influencing plagiarism. That the distributions of the responses to the statements 1.4, 1.5 and 1.8—those with the highest sample means—are not significantly different was confirmed by Friedman Test ( Chi-Square = 5.815, p = .055). Consequently, the average values (means) of the responses to the statements 1.4, 1.5 and 1.8 are not significantly different. The average values of the responses for all the other statements (1.1, 1.7, 1.6, 1.2, and 1.3 listed in the descending order of sample means) are significantly lower. A Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Tests also confirmed that the distributions of the responses to the statements 1.6 and 1.7 are not statistically significantly different ( Z = -0.430, p = .667). The same holds for statements 1.2 and 1.3 ( Z = -0.407, p = .684). A Mann-Whitney Test showed that there is no statistically significant difference between the distributions of the responses in the group of ICT and Web reasons considering gender (male, female), area of study (technical and social sciences (students of natural sciences were omitted due to the small sample size)) and motivation for study.

ICT and Web reasons were detected as the dominant factors influencing plagiarism for Slovene and German students. As can be seen in Table 1 , there are significant differences ( t = 4.177, p = .000 ) between the Slovene and German students regarding this factor. It seems that the Slovene students ( M = 3.69, SD = 0.56) attribute greater importance to the ICT and Web reasons than the German students ( M = 3.47, SD = 0.55). There are also significant differences ( t = 5.137, p = .000 ) between the Slovene and German students regarding regulation. It seems that the Slovene students ( M = 2.35, SD = 0.63) attribute greater importance to regulation reasons than the German students ( M = 2.05, SD = 0.61). Both, however, consider this factor to have the lowest impact on plagiarism overall. There are no significant differences ( t = 1.939, p = .053 ) between the Slovene students ( M = 2.56, SD = 0.67) and the German students ( M = 2.44, SD = 0.68) regarding academic skills. The Slovene students ( M = 2.87, SD = 0.68) attribute greater importance to teaching factors than the German students ( M = 2.56, SD = 0.72). The differences are significant ( t = 4.827, p = .000 ) . There are significant differences ( t = -3.522, p = .000 ) between the Slovene and German students regarding pressure, whereas the German students ( M = 2.71, SD = 0.91) attribute greater importance to this reason than the Slovene students ( M = 2.42, SD = 0.86). The same goes for pride. The German students ( M = 2.67, SD = 0.80) attribute greater importance to pride reasons than the Slovene students ( M = 2.43, SD = 0.84). The differences are significant ( t = -3.032, p = .003 ) . There are no significant differences ( t = - 0.836, p = .404 ) between the Slovene students ( M = 2.47, SD = 0.82) and the German students ( M = 2.54, SD = 0.94) regarding other factors influencing plagiarism.

We conducted an Independent Samples t-test to compare the average time (in hours) spent per day on the Internet by the Slovene students with that of the German students. The test was significant, t = -2.064, p = .004. The Slovene students on average spent less time on the Internet ( M = 3.52, SD = 2.23) than the German students ( M = 4.09, SD = 3.72).

The average values of the responses for individual statements according to gender (male, female) and the significances for the t-test of equality of means are shown in S3 Table for the Slovene students and in S4 Table for the German students. The average values of the responses for these statements are significantly different. They are higher for males than for females (except in the case of statement 3.8 for the Slovene students and 4.1 for the German students). Slovene and German male students think that they will not get caught and that the gains are higher than the losses. Both also think that teachers do not read students’ assignments.

The average values of the responses for individual statements according to area of study (technical sciences, social sciences, natural sciences) and the results for ANOVA for the Slovene students are shown in S5 Table . Gabriel's post hoc test was used to confirm the differences between groups. The significant difference between the students of technical sciences and the students of social sciences was confirmed for all statements listed in S5 Table . There were higher average values of responses for the students of technical sciences. The only significant difference between the students of technical sciences and the students of natural sciences was confirmed for statement 5.6 (there were higher average values of responses for the students of technical sciences). No other pairs of group means were significantly different.

The average values of the responses for individual statements according to area of study (technical sciences, social sciences) and the significances for the t-test of equality of means for German students are shown in S6 Table . For German students, only technical and social sciences were considered because of the low number of natural sciences students. The average values of responses for these statements are significantly different. They were higher for the students of technical sciences than for the students of social sciences.

The average values of the responses for individual statements according to the motivation of the students (lower, higher) and the significances for t-Test of equality of means are shown in S7 Table for the Slovene students and in S8 Table for the German students. The average values of the responses for these statements are significantly different. They were higher for students with lower motivation for both groups of students, except in the case of statements 2.1 and 6.6 for Slovene students.

We conducted an Independent Samples t-test to compare the average time (in hours) spent per day on the Internet by groups of low motivated students with groups of highly motivated students. For Slovene students, the test was not significant, t = -1.423, p = .156. For German students, the test was significant, t = 2.298, p = .024. Students with lower motivation for study ( M = 5.24, SD = 4.84) on average spent more time on the Internet than those with higher motivation for study ( M = 3.76, SD = 3.27).

The Chi-Square Test of Independence was used to determine whether there is an association between gender (male, female) and motivation for study (lower, higher). There was a significant association between gender and motivation for the Slovene students ( Chi-Square = 4.499, p = .034). Indeed, it was more likely for females to have a high motivation for study (76.9%) than for males to have a high motivation for study (61.6%). For the German students, the test was not significant ( Chi-Square = 0.731, p = .393).

In this study, we aimed to explore factors that influence students’ factors influencing plagiarism. An international comparison between German and Slovene students was made. Our research draws on students from two universities from the two considered countries that cover all traditional subjects of study. In this regard the conclusions are representative and statistically relevant, although we of course cannot exclude the possibility of small deviations if other or more institutions would be considered. Taken as a whole, there are no major differences between German and Slovene students when it comes to motivation for study and working habits. In both cases, more than two thirds of the students were highly motivated for study and more than 60% were working during their time of study. About 33% of the surveyed students spend on average two or less hours a day on the Internet, and about one quarter spend on average more than five hours a day on the Internet.

When it comes to explaining plagiarism in higher education, the German and Slovene students equally indicated the ease-of-use of information-communication technologies and the Web as the top one cause for their behaviour. Which does not lag behind other notions of current contributions to the topic of plagiarism in the world. Indeed, our findings reinforce the notion that new technologies and the Web have a strong influence on students and are the main driver behind plagiarism [ 20 , 21 , 22 ]. An academic moral panic has been caused by the arrival in higher education of a new generation of younger students [ 39 ], deemed to be ‘digital natives’ [ 40 ] and allegedly endowed with an inherent ability for using information-communication technologies (ICT). This younger generation is dubbed ‘Generation Me’ [ 41 ], and it is believed that their expectations, interactions and learning processes have been affected by ICT. Introna, et al., Ma et al., and Yeo, agree that the understanding of the concept of plagiarism through the use of ICT is the main contributor to it being a problem [ 42 , 43 , 44 ]. The effortless use of ICT such as the Internet has made it easy for students to retrieve information with a simple click of the mouse [ 45 , 46 ].

The Slovene students in our study nominated the teaching factor as the second most important reason for plagiarism. This result is also found in other studies, namely those of Šprajc et al. [ 30 ] and Barnas [ 47 ]. Young people in Slovenia are, like in other Western societies, given a prolonged period of identity exploration and self-focus, i.e., freedom from institutional demands and obligations, competence, and freedom to decide for themselves [ 48 , 49 ]. The results of the German students however, contradict this finding that teaching factors are one of the most important factors influencing plagiarism. Indeed, the top two factors influencing plagiarism for the German students are actually pressure and pride—and not teaching factors. Overall though, the findings for both the German students and the Slovene students are in line with e.g. Koul et al., who suggest that factors influencing plagiarism may vary across cultures [ 4 ]. Among German students, the pressure and pride in the second and third places in terms of importance are mostly reflected, which does not lag behind the mention of the author Rothenberg stated that in Germany today ‘pride could be expressed for individual accomplishments’ [ 50 ]. As far as the Slovene students are concerned, the authors Kondrič et al. presumed that there is a specific set of values in Slovenia, which perhaps intensify the distinction between the collectivist culture of former socialist countries and the individualism of Western countries [ 51 ]. This might shed light on why the Slovene students consider teaching factors as being one of the most important factors influencing plagiarism.

Furthermore, several studies have implied that individual characteristics, especially gender, play an important role when it comes to plagiarism [ 12 , 13 , 15 , 16 ]. A number of studies from around the world have shown that men more frequently plagiarise than women do. For example, Reviews of North American’s research into conventional plagiarism has indicated that male students cheat more often than female students [ 12 ]. The results we found are basically in line with these findings. Since the average values of responses are significantly different for male and female students, gender seems to play an important role in terms of plagiarism.

Park pointed out that one reason for plagiarism is efficiency gain [ 11 ]. About 15 years after this statement, the study at hand is empirical evidence that efficiency gain due to different forms of pressure is still a factor that influences students’ behaviour in terms of plagiarism. Lack of knowledge and uncertainties about methodologies are additional factors that are frequently recognized as reasons for plagiarism [ 11 , 17 , 18 ]. The results at hand support these studies since the responses about e.g. academic skills demonstrate students’ lack of knowledge.

Another interesting finding of our study shows that students with a lower motivation for study spend more time on the Internet, which complements our finding that the Internet is one of the simplest solutions for studying. The German students showed a somewhat higher level of motivation to study than the Slovene students, but the difference is not statistically significant.

We would nevertheless like to draw attention to the perceived difference, which refers to the perception of the factors influencing the plagiarism of the teacher factors and academic skills (Slovene students) and pride and pressure (German students). The perceived difference between students is one of the social dimensions that represents a tool to promote true motivation for study and proper orientation without ethically disputable solutions (such as plagiarism). In all this, it makes sense to direct students and educate them from the beginning of education together with information technology, while also builds responsible individuals who will not take technology and the Internet as a negative tool for studying and succeeding, but to help them to solve and make decisions in the right way. The main aim of this research into Slovene and German students was to increase understanding of students’ attitudes towards plagiarism and, above all, to identify the reasons that lead students to plagiarise. On this basis, we want to expose the way of non-plagiarism promotion to be developed in a way that will be more acceptable and more understandable in each country and adequately controlled on a personal and institutional level.

Conclusions

In contrast to a number of preliminary studies, the major findings of this research paper indicate that new technologies and the Web have a strong and significant influence on plagiarism, whereas in this specific context gender and socialisation factors do not play a significant role. Since the majority of the students in our study believe that new technologies and the Web have a strong influence on plagiarism, we can assume that technological progress and globalisation has started breaking down national frontiers and crossing cultural boundaries. These findings have also created the impression that at universities the gender gap is not predominant in all areas as it might be in society.

Nevertheless, some minor results in our study indicate that there are still some differences between Slovene and German students. For example, it seems like in Slovenia, teaching factors have a greater influence on plagiarism than in Germany. Indeed, in Germany, the focus should rest on the implementation and publication of a code of ethics, and on training students to deal with pressure.

This research focuses on only two countries, Slovenia and Germany. Thus, the findings at hand are not necessarily generalizable, though they do manifest a certain trend in terms of the reasons why students resort to plagiarism. Furthermore, the results could be a starting point for additional comparative studies between different European regions. In particular, further research into the influence of digitalization and the Web on plagiarism, and the role of socialisation and gender factors on plagiarism, could contribute to the discourse on plagiarism in higher education institutions.

Understanding the reasons behind plagiarism and fostering awareness of the issue among students might help prevent future academic misconduct through increased support and guidance during students’ time studying at the university. In this sense, further reflection on preventive measures is required. Indeed, rather than focusing on the detection of plagiarism, focusing on preventive measures could have a positive effect on good scientific practice in the near future.

Supporting information

S1 table. frequency distributions of the study variables..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.s001

S2 Table. Descriptive statistics for items referring to the factors influencing plagiarism, by nationality and results of the t-Test.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.s002

S3 Table. Descriptive statistics for items referring to the factors influencing plagiarism, by gender and results of the t-Test (SLO).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.s003

S4 Table. Descriptive statistics for items referring to the factors influencing plagiarism, by gender and results of the t-Test (GER).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.s004

S5 Table. Descriptive statistics for items referring to the factors influencing plagiarism, by area of study and results of the One-Way ANOVA (SLO).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.s005

S6 Table. Descriptive statistics for items referring to the factors influencing plagiarism, by study area and results of the t-Test (GER).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.s006

S7 Table. Descriptive statistics for items referring to the factors influencing plagiarism, by motivation and results of the t-Test (SLO).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.s007

S8 Table. Descriptive statistics for items referring to the factors influencing plagiarism, by motivation and results of the t-Test (GER).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.s008

S1 File. Individual data.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202252.s009

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Understanding Undergraduate Plagiarism in the Context of Students’ Academic Experience

• Published: 19 March 2021
• Volume 20 , pages 147–168, ( 2022 )

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• Jorge Ávila de Lima   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2311-1796 1 ,
• Áurea Sousa 2 ,
• Angélica Medeiros 3 ,
• Beatriz Misturada 3 &
• Cátia Novo 3  

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Previous research has shown that student plagiarism is the product of interplay between individual and situational factors. The present study examined the relationship between these two sets of factors with a particular focus on variables linked to students’ academic context namely, their perception of peer behaviors, their experience of adversities in academic life, and their year of enrollment. So far, these situational features have received scant attention in studies of plagiarism conducted in most of Europe. A survey was carried out in a European higher education institution, involving a sample of 427 undergraduates. The data was analyzed via both conventional univariate and bivariate statistical analysis, and multivariate, multilevel modeling. The results suggest that awareness of peer plagiarizing and the experience of hardships in academic life, rather than level of academic achievement or year of study, are significantly related to plagiarizing, whereas heightened perception of the seriousness of plagiarism is associated with a lower likelihood of this type of behavior. The study also shows that students who plagiarize are more likely to be involved in other types of academic misconduct.

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Student Perspectives on Plagiarism

Exploring the Perceived Spectrum of Plagiarism: a Case Study of Online Learning

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de Lima, J.Á., Sousa, Á., Medeiros, A. et al. Understanding Undergraduate Plagiarism in the Context of Students’ Academic Experience. J Acad Ethics 20 , 147–168 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-021-09396-3

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• Research Process Video Series
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Generative AI and Writing
• USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
• Bibliography

According to USC's Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards , plagiarism is:

• The submission of material authored by another person but represented as the student's own work, whether that material is paraphrased or copied in verbatim or near-verbatim form.
• The submission of material subjected to editorial revision by another person that results in substantive changes in content or major alteration of writing style.
• Improper acknowledgment of sources in essays or papers.

Avoiding Allegations of Plagiarism

An allegation of plagiarism is intent-neutral . In other words, the reader cannot discern whether the absence of a citation was done deliberately or you simply forgot to add a citation or accidentally cited to the wrong source. Therefore, it is important to proofread your paper before you submit it to ensure you have listed all sources used during your research and that every in-text citation relates to a full citation in your list of references. This is also why it is important to keep track of everything you have used during the course of writing your paper so you can easily assess whether all your sources have been cited.

With this in mind, credit must be given when using one of the following in your own research paper:

• Another person's idea, opinion, or theory;
• Any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings, or other non-textual elements used or that you adapted from another source;
• Any pieces of information that are not common knowledge;
• Quotations of another person's actual spoken or written words; or
• Paraphrase of another person's spoken or written words.

To introduce students to the process of citing other people's work, the USC Libraries have created a useful online tutorial on avoiding plagiarism . It describes what constitutes plagiarism and offers helpful advice on how to properly cite sources. In addition, the Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards has also published, "Trojan Integrity: A Guide for Avoiding Plagiarism." This guide provides a comprehensive explanation for how to defend yourself against allegations of violating the university's policy on academic integrity.

If you have any doubts about whether to cite a particular source concerning an argument or statement made in your paper, protect yourself by citing the source or sources that helps the reader determine the validity of your work. Note that not citing a source not only raises concerns about the academic integrity of your paper, but, more importantly, it tells the reader that you did not conduct an effective or thorough review of the literature in support of examining the research problem. It also inhibits the reader's ability to review the cited source to obtain further information about what is being discussed in your paper.

Academic Integrity. The Writing Center. University of Kansas; Avoiding Plagiarism. Academic Skills Program, University of Canberra; How and When to Cite Other People's Work. Psychology Writing Center, University of Washington; Proctor, Margaret. "How Not to Plagiarize." University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Plagiarism. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Plagiarism. The Writing Center. Department of English, George Mason University. Avoiding Plagiarism. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University.

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Recognizing & Avoiding Plagiarism in Your Research Paper

• Posted on January 26, 2024 January 26, 2024

Recognizing and Avoiding Plagiarism in Your Research Paper

Plagiarism in research is unfortunately still a serious problem today. Research papers with plagiarism contain unauthorized quoting from other authors; the writer may even try to pass off others’ work as their own. This damages the individual’s reputation, but also the entire class, school, or field, because one can never fully trust that writer’s work is genuine. Naturally, you don’t want to contribute to that problem.

Unfortunately, plagiarism doesn’t have to be intentional to be damaging. College students and even professionals often fail to properly cite their sources for anything that isn’t common knowledge. While accidental plagiarism is more innocent, it is not less dangerous as it can still get you in a great deal of academic trouble.

The good news is, as long as you put research integrity first, and do your plagiarism due diligence, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

Ready to learn all about research paper citation rules, and how to avoid getting caught in this trap? Let’s take a look.

What is Plagiarism in Research?

Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work or intellectual property without acknowledging what you’re doing. Before you can truly understand plagiarism rules, it’s critical to know what plagiarism is in academic writing. In a nutshell, work is considered plagiarized if it is not your own original work and is also not cited as someone else’s.

Plagiarism is unethical because it takes the blood, sweat, and tears of other writers and passes it off as yours, without real effort on your part. This can dilute someone else’s standing or lead to confusion down the line about where credit is due. If readers can’t tell whose work led to certain academic papers, data sets, or theories, the science and art worlds suffer.

Science writers, journalists, marketing experts, medical and dental researchers, and students, among others, have all been stung by misunderstanding these rules. Even a simple copy and paste without attribution or referencing the original author is enough to signal professional and/or academic dishonesty.

The bottom line is, if you’re using someone else’s text word-for-word, you absolutely must note where that work came from. This protects the ideas of others and upholds publication ethics for all of us. That means, of course, you need to spot any plagiarism red flags from the get-go.

What Types of Plagiarism Can Occur in a Research Paper?

Some of the most common forms of plagiarism that occur in research papers and other forms of academic writing are:

• In-text citations, in parentheses, without a corresponding citation in a bibliography or works cited page, which means people have trouble finding the true source
• Citing work incorrectly
• Not following the prescribed citation style, whether that’s APA, MLA, or Chicago, making it difficult or impossible for others to find the source
• Paraphrasing someone else’s work too closely without citing the source
• Using data or statistics from someone else without a proper citation
• Following the format of someone else’s work in a section or in the paper as a whole
• Attributing research to the wrong person, such as cutting and pasting someone else’s quote and attributing it either to an incorrect author, or simply not providing attribution at all
• Relying too heavily on just a few sources, meaning you are taking their ideas wholesale

The truth is, most of this plagiarism isn’t even on purpose. Indeed, unintentional plagiarism is a major source of confusion in academia, where you yourself don’t realize that you have committed it. Self-plagiarism poses a problem too and is when you reuse your own work without citing it. This is definitely considered plagiarism even though you are the original author. Although re-using your old work is allowed with citations, doing so without them passes off old work as original, which has two drawbacks:

• You are not obeying the spirit of the assignment, which is to put in the time to create something new with your own ideas.
• You create downstream confusion when people are searching for your work, which conflicts with the entire goal of citing sources.

Direct plagiarism also occurs; however, direct plagiarism is intentional. Intentional thievery is even worse because it is often disguised by the person committing it and therefore more harmful to the original author. Again, this leads to severe moral and ethical problems, as it dilutes the hard work of others. Considering the fact that it’s generally quite easy to detect direct plagiarism, it’s worthwhile for students to realize that committing plagiarism intentionally is never worth it.

In summary, there are many examples of plagiarism of which to be aware. All of these can lead to serious trouble if you’re not continually wary of the plagiarism research paper traps. Students should know that Blackboard and other online academic portals check for plagiarism . Professionals should know that serious plagiarizing can cost them licenses, grants, and standing among their peers.

In other words, it’s no joke. To avoid potential consequences, keep an eye out for the following plagiarism research paper warning signs.

Warning Signs of Plagiarism in a Research Paper

To avoid plagiarism, research papers must be free of uncited work that uses the ideas of others. That means indicating the original source every single time you use one, with a proper citation, in the correct style as dictated by your professor or industry.

While unintentional plagiarism can happen to anyone, knowing its signs can help students and professional authors realize when they need to rewrite or add a citation to their writing. That will help you stay on the good side of academia, respect others’ work and ensure your own work is always improving. When reviewing your paper, look for the following signs that you may have failed to cite sources properly.

Infrequent Use of Citations

If you simply don’t have very many citations in a long research paper, you are likely using the ideas of others without proper credit. Most well-researched papers use dozens of sources for a 10-page paper. That indicates that you are weaving together others’ work to express your own ideas.

However, if your work contains close to five or six citations, chances are you are relying too heavily on ideas that are not your own. This indicates that you need to search more carefully for ideas that belong to others in your writing and cite them. As another suggestion, you should probably seek additional different sources to support your argument.

Using Words That You Don’t Normally Use

Any section of your paper that contains a smattering of words that don’t fit into your existing vocabulary hints you’ve likely nabbed them from somewhere else. While it’s fine (and good!) to build your word bank, inserting non-typical words into your text is a good indication that you are also inserting the ideas of others without credit. Comb over such sections carefully to ensure you have properly accredited the original writer.

Changes in Tone and Sentence Structure

As with words you don’t use, tone and sentence structure that is alien to your writing should be a red flag. Look carefully at these sections, asking yourself:

• Are any of these sentences just reconstructions of someone else’s writing?
• If I rewrote this idea from the ground up, would it sound different?
• Is this the tone I’m even going for in this paper?

Changes in Font

Changes in the font used in your research paper is a dead giveaway. It indicates clearly that you have copied and pasted something into your paper, be that from an outside source or your own previous work. If you spot such a section, you should either rewrite it or source it accurately, and be sure to change the font to match the rest of your paper.

Tips to Avoid Plagiarizing

Avoiding plagiarism is truly easy. Simply provide citations for all research and ideas that you didn’t create yourself, in the correct styles. These styles include APA, most common for science and medical writing; MLA, common for the arts; and Chicago Style, usually used for publishing. You can also use the following tips for beating a plagiarism checker :

• Paraphrase the thoughts of others in your own words instead of copying their work verbatim. This reduces the chances that your work will pull up in a search ahead of theirs, which is the fair thing to do. Make sure that you don’t confuse paraphrasing with complete freedom to forego citations, though, as both are important together.
• Link your own ideas together using the ideas of others, but rely most heavily on your original work. Others’ thoughts and words should be used to support yours, not vice versa. Before you turn to sources for your paper, outline your own approach thoroughly. This will minimize the chances of unintended theft and maximize the impact of your contributions.
• Always use quotation marks if you are using someone’s ideas word for word. Depending on the citation style you are using, you may instead use blocked and indented text to indicate a quote from someone else. Be sure to format your paper correctly, according to the style that has been assigned to you by a professor or superior.
• Never use words you’re not familiar with. Not only can that lead to you expressing your ideas incorrectly, but it can also trigger plagiarism checkers if you haven’t made ideas your own.
• Provide a full works-cited or bibliography page with every assignment you submit. Again, adhere to the citation style that was given to you, which will allow others to easily locate the sources you used. Make sure to properly cite sources in the text, footnotes, and at the end of your paper, as dictated by your style guide.
• Be honest with professors or bosses. If you truly cannot finish something in time and are motivated to act unethically, resist the urge and take your concerns to the proper authority figure. Even turning in a botched assignment is far better for your reputation and your own ethics than using someone else’s work without the proper citations.
• Use a citation checker to ensure that you haven’t ripped off someone else’s work without meaning it. This protects them, protects you, and protects academics as a whole.

Remember, as long as you go into an assignment with the intention to create something original that reflects your honest opinion, you will likely be fine. However, you do yourself a huge disservice if you don’t take that extra step and check your sources with a plagiarism checker.

Using Quetext To Avoid Plagiarizing in Research Papers

A citation generator can help professionals, researchers, and university students alike cite web pages, journal articles, books, newspapers, and more. With proper citation, you’ll never have to worry about accusations of plagiarism again.

Using the Quetext plagiarism checker before submitting the assignment can provide reassurance that no unauthorized quoting is taking place in your research paper. It will help you by flagging any spots in your paper that still require citations, such as a missing attribution for a book or original source.

Quetext is not only reliable, but it is also easy to use. If plagiarism of any kind is detected, the tool automatically generates the proper citation, in the required citation style, right inside the text. The citation generator will create the citations your paper needs in APA, MLA, or Chicago Style. All you have to do is enter the citation components, and voilà: your works cited page, bibliography, footnotes, and the paper as a whole will appear in the proper style.

The tool works whether the source is private or published, personal, academic, professional, or anything else. Now you can be sure to honor others’ work and avoid any negative consequences from plagiarised work. This will keep you in good standing with academic institutions and free you from any shadow of scientific misconduct.

As long as you make the effort to do your own work, respect your school’s academic integrity and use a plagiarism checker, you should have nothing to worry about. Don’t wait any longer to get peace of mind … start today.

Sign Up for Quetext Today!

Click below to find a pricing plan that fits your needs.

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• Research Guides

Plagiarism: Overview

• Copyright for Students
• Visual Plagiarism

What's Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is using someone else's words or ideas without giving them proper credit..

Plagiarism can be unintentional, such as forgetting to cite your sources in a paper or using an image without giving the creator credit, or intentional, such as buying a paper or using someone else's ideas and passing them off as your own.

Plagiarism is a serious problem, both in academia and in professional settings.

Madison College's Policy

According to the Madison College Academic Integrity webpage, students who plagiarize will be disciplined according to the 10 disciplinary sanctions for academic misconduct listed on the webpage.  This could be anything from an oral reprimand to suspension from the institution.  The procedures for allegations and appeals also appear on this page. Visit the college's Academic Integrity page for more information.

madisoncollege.edu/academic-integrity

Quoting and Paraphrasing

Two ways to use someone's ideas are quoting or word-for-word , and paraphrasing , or rewording . Either way, give the original author credit for their idea.

When using someone's idea word-for-word, introduce it either before or after the quote, and put their words in quotations. Then, give the author credit directly after the sentence using the appropriate citation style.

The source must also be included at the end of the paper in a list of Works Cited, such as this one below which is following the rules of the MLA style. 

Paraphrasing

When you take someone's ideas and reword them using your own vocabulary , you still need to give the original author credit . 

As when quoting, the source must be included at the end of the paper in a list of Works Cited, such as this one below which is following the rules of the MLA style. 

• Citation Help Guide
• Madison College Writing Center
• Plagiarism FAQs
• Purdue OWL Avoiding Plagiarism

Best Practices

Organize your research from the start

• Write your notes as if you are writing a paper. Make note of author and page number whenever quoting or paraphrasing, and include a full citation at the end of your notes for each reading.
• Citation management tools such as Zotero  or pasting citations for your sources into a Word document are good ways to track your work.

Cite your sources and format your citations

• Creating citations as you write your paper can be a good way to avoid accidentally plagiarizing sources by failing to cite them. Double check your citations are formatted correctly. The Madison College Citation Guide has some great resources. 

Turn in your own work

• Never turn in work you have not written yourself. Madison College's Academic Integrity policy prohibits such actions, and turning in work that is not your own also has serious consequences in the corporate world.

Acknowledge the work of others

• When turning in group projects make sure you properly identify who created which parts. Look closely at assignments to see if it allows for group work or if the work needs to be yours alone. 

Ask an expert

• If you are unsure about citations, how to phrase something, or where to find research, ask an expert! Madison College Librarians are happy to help with citations and research and the Madison College Writing Center can help with citations and phrasing.

Common Knowledge

The exception to citing sources is when something is considered common knowledge . But what does that mean?

Common knowledge is information that the average reader would know and accept as reliable without having to look it up.

This includes:

• information most people know, such as that there are four seasons in a year, or that Barack Obama was the first American of mixed race to be elected president
• information shared by a cultural or national group, such as national holidays or the names of cultural heroes
• knowledge shared by members of a certain field, such as the assertion that frequent nurse handwashing reduces the spread of infection in hospitals.

 Because of this, common knowledge is contextual - what may be common knowledge in a certain culture or field might not be elsewhere. 

How do you know if something is common knowledge? Consider:

• Who is your audience?
• What can you assume they already know?
• Will you be asked where you obtained this information?

Common Knowledge . (n.d.). Academic Integrity at MIT. https://integrity.mit.edu/handbook/citing-your-sources/what-common-knowledge

Guide Attribution

Portions of this guide created and developed by Robin Gee, University of Wisconsin - Madison iSchool Practicum student 

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• Research guides

Writing an Educational Research Paper

What is plagiarism.

The Lynch School of Education defines plagiarism as follows: Plagiarism is the deliberate act of taking the words, ideas, data, illustrative material, or statements of someone else, without full and proper acknowledgment and presenting them as one’s own.

Plagiarism: How to Avoid It

Avoiding plagiarism.

Take excellent notes . Plagiarism often stems from sloppy research and subsequent rewriting rather than a deliberate desire to cheat. Nevertheless, even unintentional failure to cite sources correctly and honestly may constitute plagiarism. Many students mistakenly take bad notes during the research process. They write someone else’s text verbatim on a card or on their computer and forget quotation marks. When they write the paper and refer to their notes, they forget the text on the card or computer is another author’s and not their own. Any reader who recognizes the original text believes that the student has cheated. This can lead to tough penalties.

• Take excellent notes, utilize them effectively, write the entire paper yourself, and document sources well and honestly.
• Ask your professor. If you're not sure about citing something, check with your instructor.
• Plan your time carefully - often times students make careless mistakes when under pressure to complete a paper or assignment.

Further assistance:

• OWL Purdue Online Writing Lab "There are few intellectual offenses more serious than plagiarism in academic and professional contexts. This resource offers advice on how to avoid plagiarism in your work."
• Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It "In college courses, we are continually engaged with other people’s ideas: we read them in texts, hear them in lecture, discuss them in class, and incorporate them into our own writing. As a result, it is very important that we give credit where it is due. Plagiarism is using others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information."
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Plagiarism in the Context of Education and Evolving Detection Strategies

Armen yuri gasparyan.

1 Departments of Rheumatology and Research and Development, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust (Teaching Trust of the University of Birmingham, UK), Russells Hall Hospital, Dudley, West Midlands, UK.

Bekaidar Nurmashev

2 South Kazakhstan State Pharmaceutical Academy, Shymkent, Kazakhstan.

Bakhytzhan Seksenbayev

Vladimir i. trukhachev.

3 Stavropol State Agrarian University, Stavropol, Russian Federation.

Elena I. Kostyukova

4 Department of Accounting Management, Stavropol State Agrarian University, Stavropol, Russian Federation.

George D. Kitas

5 Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.

Plagiarism may take place in any scientific journals despite currently employed anti-plagiarism tools. The absence of widely acceptable definitions of research misconduct and reliance solely on similarity checks do not allow journal editors to prevent most complex cases of recycling of scientific information and wasteful, or ‘predatory,’ publishing. This article analyses Scopus-based publication activity and evidence on poor writing, lack of related training, emerging anti-plagiarism strategies, and new forms of massive wasting of resources by publishing largely recycled items, which evade the ‘red flags’ of similarity checks.

In some non-Anglophone countries ‘copy-and-paste’ writing still plagues pre- and postgraduate education. Poor research management, absence of courses on publication ethics, and limited access to quality sources confound plagiarism as a cross-cultural and multidisciplinary phenomenon. Over the past decade, the advent of anti-plagiarism software checks has helped uncover elementary forms of textual recycling across journals. But such a tool alone proves inefficient for preventing complex forms of plagiarism. Recent mass retractions of plagiarized articles by reputable open-access journals point to critical deficiencies of current anti-plagiarism software that do not recognize manipulative paraphrasing and editing. Manipulative editing also finds its way to predatory journals, ignoring the adherence to publication ethics and accommodating nonsense plagiarized items. The evolving preventive strategies are increasingly relying on intelligent (semantic) digital technologies, comprehensively evaluating texts, keywords, graphics, and reference lists. It is the right time to enforce adherence to global editorial guidance and implement a comprehensive anti-plagiarism strategy by helping all stakeholders of scholarly communication.

INTRODUCTION

Scholarly publications are the essence of scientific research, networking, and exploration of new areas of knowledge. Reporting original data and formulating new ideas in one's own words are traditionally viewed as the foundation of effective publishing and post-publication communication.

Plagiarism is an act of misappropriation of others' intellectual property, including but not limited to scholarly texts, research methods, graphics, and ideas ( 1 ). Along with fabrication and falsification, it is classed as research misconduct. The etymology of the term “plagiarism,” which means literary piracy, refers to the Latin words plagiārius (“kidnapper”) and plaga (“hunting net”), stemming from the Ancient Greek root word πλέκειν (plekein, “to weave,” “to braid”). The modern Greek term λογοκλοπία (logoklopía, from λογο- [logo-, “word”] and κλέπτω [klépto, “steal”] points to the wrongful appropriation of words.

Failure to obtain permission to reproduce previously published material and to acknowledge primary sources are the main components of the misappropriation ( 2 ). Although substantial unattributed textual copying may lead to authorship disputes and copyright infringement with legal consequences ( 3 , 4 ), plagiarism is widely viewed as a distinct ethical issue, necessitating rewriting, rejection, or retraction of copied texts and whole papers, public shaming and expulsion of plagiarists with their temporary or permanent barring from publishing. The seriousness of the charge and severity of the penalty depend on the specific motives of plagiarists (intentional, unintentional, or accidental theft), their awareness of related ethical norms, language proficiency, context, and volume of copying ( 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ). Publication experts judge intentional and unintentional research misconduct differently. Despite the fact that both forms of misconduct distort the scientific record and should not be tolerated ( 9 ), there are some who argue that unintentional misconduct is “less serious” and “less harmful” ( 10 ).

Debates also surround self-plagiarism, or text recycling, which is viewed by some authors as an acceptable form of reusing own words and writings. This is a vexing problem for those who work in a single field and publish articles with overlapping definitions, descriptions of methods, and references to own works. It is also a problem for academic institutions, where students' dissertations containing their own published articles as whole chapters are viewed as self-plagiarized. In cases of reusing copyright-protected material, self-plagiarists may even face legal actions by primary publishers. To avoid ethical and legal issues, authors are advised to avoid adapting own previous publications and make an extra effort when (re)writing new texts ( 11 , 12 ).

Plagiarized items may appear in any journals, regardless of their scope, prestige of the publisher, geographical location, indexing status, citation impact, rigor of peer review, and formal adherence to ethical guidelines. However, indexed sources with low reader attention and minimal citations are more likely to accommodate illegitimately copied material ( 13 ). In fact, soft or non-existent peer review and essential editorial checks in ‘predatory’ journals attract inexperienced and/or dishonest authors, who may submit redundant and plagiarized manuscripts. Such journals exploit the gold open-access publishing model and charge their authors without providing quality services for distributing validated and innovative information ( 14 ).There are no exact estimates of the prevalence of plagiarism in scholarly publications due to uncertainties around its definition and deficiencies of current detection strategies. Analysis of corrective measures across indexed journals can help explore trends in unethical copying. A cross-sectional study of 134 retractions by BioMed Central journals in the period 2000 to 2015 identified textual plagiarism as a common reason of literature correction (16%) ( 15 ). Another analysis of more than 2,000 retracted PubMed-indexed articles revealed that 9.8% of the retractions were due to plagiarism, which became a frequent form of research misconduct since 2005 ( 16 ). Based on this study, Japan, China, India, Korea, Italy, Turkey, Iran, and France were identified as countries with a relatively high incidence of plagiarism. Finally, an analysis of 835 retracted papers indexed in PubMed between 2008 and 2012, demonstrated high rates of plagiarism-related retraction among authors from Italy (16 out of 24 retractions, 66.7%), India (18 out of 49, 36.7%), and China (24 out of 143, 16.8%) ( 17 ).

The reasons and forms of the misconduct are complex and poorly explored in the context of various linguistic and professional backgrounds. Poor writing, paraphrasing, and referencing skills are common and easily identifiable reasons of misappropriation of others' intellectual property, warranting advanced academic English writing courses for researchers and authors from non-Anglophone countries ( 18 ). There are still many instances of plagiarism in non-English publications, which are often overlooked and not taken seriously by research managers and editors' associations. Importantly, the growing demand for publications, a major criterion for academic promotion, has created an impetus for commercial editing agencies in some countries to sell apparently copied manuscripts to inexperienced and careless authors ( 19 ).

Despite the fact that the intellectual theft is not a new phenomenon, its implications have become dramatic in these times of expanding online databases and archiving scientific evidence ( 20 ). Plagiarism is now viewed as a major threat to scientific evidence accumulation, which relies entirely on originality and transparency of scholarly publications ( 21 ). Unwitting authors, who perform systematic searches and retrieve literature from evidence-based databases, may cite such unethical items before and after their retractions, further damaging the credibility of current standards of research reporting.

With the constantly expanding number of indexed journals, the likelihood of encountering recycled, redundant, or otherwise unethical items is increasing. In the era of digital technologies and prospering commercial editing services, editors and readers encounter ever more cases of plagiarism, which pass unnoticed at checks by anti-plagiarism software.

PUBLICATION ACTIVITY

The dynamics and patterns of global interest to the issue can be explored by a snapshot analysis of searches through Scopus. As of March 31, 2017, there are 4,924 items tagged with the term “Plagiarism” in their titles, abstracts, or keywords, with date range of 1831 to 2017 ( Fig. 1 ). The first 2 indexed letters of charges of plagiarism were published in The Lancet back in 1831. For the following 150 years, annual publication activity was negligible. In 1980, 17 tagged items were published, followed by 35 years of booming activity. Two peaks with 427 and 457 indexed documents are recorded in 2013 and 2016, respectively. The latest article covers the issue of plagiarism of ideas, which can be traced by semantic analysis ( 22 ).

Number of Scopus-indexed items tagged with the term “Plagiarism” in 1970–2017 (as of March 31, 2017).

The top 5 sources in the field are Lecture Notes in Computer Science (n = 121), Nature (n = 104), Notes and Queries (n = 84), Science (n = 48), and Science and Engineering Ethics (n = 46). The top 5 prolific authors are Paolo Rosso (Valencia, Spain, number of tagged publications = 47), Benno Maria Stein (Weimar, Germany, n = 24), Miguel Roig (Queens, NY, USA, n = 22), Martin Potthast (Weimar, Germany, n = 20), Naomie Binti Salim (Skudai, Malaysia, n = 19). The main area of professional interest of these top 5 authors is computer science, except for Miguel Roig (psychology). The USA is the leading country in the field with 1,218 documents, followed by the UK (n = 469), India (n = 238), Australia (n = 212), and China (n = 197). The largest proportion of tagged documents are categorized as articles (n = 1,923, 39.1%), followed by conference papers (n = 1,011, 20.5%) and editorials (n = 527, 10.7%). Remarkably, there are 81 (1.6%) documents categorized as errata, including 29 items related to Iran and 53 items in the field of medicine. The majority of these documents (n = 45) were published in 2016 to notify about retractions of predominantly Iranian articles (n = 28), and specifically 21 items from Diagnostic Pathology (BioMed Central).

The leading subject areas are social sciences (n = 1,647, 33.4%), computer science (n = 1,290, 26.2%) and medicine (n = 1,235, 25.1%). The majority of items are in English (n = 4,575), followed by those in Spanish (n = 92) and German (n = 78). The top 10 highly-cited items attracted from 1,642 to 190 citations, with the landmark study of reasons for retractions cited 239 times ( 16 ). Finally, there are 61 tagged items, which are cited at least 61 times (h-index = 61).

PLAGIARISM IN THE CONTEXT OF EDUCATION

The large number of tagged items in social sciences points to global problems in under- and postgraduate education confounding the lack of understanding of plagiarism, cheating, and other forms of academic dishonesty among students who may choose to write and publish articles later in life. Comparative analyses suggest that young, undergraduate students, those in business studies and engineering, and residents of non-Anglophone countries frequently cheat and violate established norms of publication ethics ( 23 , 24 , 25 ).

In some Asian countries, plagiarism is viewed as a social phenomenon rooted in the dogmatic system of education, encouraging reuse of textbook information and suppressing creative thinking and generation of untested ideas ( 26 ). Poor education and unethical source use lead to plagiaristic writing by Taiwanese college students ( 27 ). Similar conclusions were drawn based on anti-plagiarism software checks of Malaysian undergraduate students' essays, containing large chunks of copied texts from easily accessible online sources without proper paraphrasing and referencing ( 28 ). Finally, a report from Korea found that first-year medical students, who are unaware of what constitutes research misconduct, often write their papers by copying material from a limited number of easily accessible online platforms, such as Google, and do not cite the sources used ( 29 ).

A cross-cultural study of plagiarism perceptions suggested that students from Germany are more sensitive toward plagiarism and better skilled to identify academic dishonesty than their Turkish and Georgian peers ( 30 ). Likewise, a survey of Australian and Chinese undergraduates concluded that Australians are more negative toward plagiarism ( 31 ). Although cultural, linguistic and psychological factors determine the behavior of plagiarists, the lack of institutional anti-plagiarism policies is believed to play a more important role ( 32 ). Academic institutions across the world differ widely in their definitions of plagiarism, practices of preventing academic dishonesty, and research methodology courses for students, deficiencies of which lead to instances of unintentional plagiarism in some countries ( 33 , 34 , 35 ).

The lack of undergraduate courses on plagiarism is reflected in poor citing and referencing skills of Iranian medical students, who may plagiarize in their first articles but become more conversant with research integrity by publishing more ( 36 ). Similar trends are observed elsewhere in the world, suggesting that technological advances and educational initiatives reduce the occurrence of ‘copy-and-paste writing’ over time ( 37 ).

A large survey of Pakistani Bachelor degree medical students (n = 421) proved that training on research ethics improve their perception of plagiarism to a level comparable to that of the faculty ( 38 ). For non-medical international Master students, librarian-guided courses on legal and ethical aspects of research, proper citing, referencing and paraphrasing have also proved successful for better understanding of plagiarism and its consequences ( 39 ).

Oversights in the system of education along with numerous short-cuts in the process of preparing student works add to the problem of plagiarism. Students with poor time management, inadequate English writing skills and lacking sufficient support by their mentors often refer to commercial editing agencies for ghost-writing or otherwise unethical services ( 40 , 41 ). The globally mushrooming ‘contract cheating’ services are also good examples of how outsourced writing assignments turn into fraud and plagiarism ( 42 ). The term was first coined by experts in computer science from Birmingham City University (Birmingham, UK), who described unethical online bid requests to get students' coursework completed by third parties ( 43 ). Students committing such an academic dishonesty usually lack English language skills and seek advanced professional services by paid contractors ( 44 ).

DETECTION OF PLAGIARISM

A large proportion of Scopus-indexed items on plagiarism relates to computer science (26.2%), reflecting the focus of specialists on digital systems for tracking overlaps in scholarly articles. Over the past few decades, reuse of words and acceptable thresholds of textual matching have been thoroughly explored in the context of manual and software checks ( 45 ). Reuse of words is an elementary form of copying, which can be easily tracked either by manual searches through Google or by software-assisted tests, provided primary sources of interest are covered by related platforms. Non-Anglophone and novice native English-speaking authors alike are now advised to check their manuscripts by advanced text-matching software, such as iThenticate ® , to detect and rewrite copied parts, and avoid accusations of misconduct ( 46 ). In an attempt to upgrade their journal ethics, editors are increasingly employing powerful anti-plagiarism software for checks at various stages of the manuscript processing ( 47 , 48 , 49 ). The Lancet journals, for example, perform anti-plagiarism checks with iThenticate ® for all review manuscripts to avoid substantial textual overlaps with already published material ( 50 ).

Remarkably, the iThenticate ® database currently has access to nearly 226,000 journals, and more than 1,300 publishers worldwide employ its similarity check services ( 51 ). While this powerful anti-plagiarism software with access to massive volumes of scholarly sources is now widely employed by leading publishers, including Elsevier, the Nature Publishing Group, and Springer, it is still unaffordable for start-up and small publishers and standalone journals with limited funding. Established publishers started trialling the software back in June 2008, and fees at that time started out at $0.75 per article ( 52 ). However, a more recent report indicates that the iThenticate® screening of all 300–350 annual submissions would cost the American Journal of Neuroradiology , the official organ of the American Society of Neuroradiology, approximately $6,800 ( 53 ).

The relatively high cost of the similarity checks is a barrier for testing all submissions by publishers in developing countries. Testing only suspicious manuscripts, and particularly reviews, is perhaps justifiable for these publishers, but such a strategy opens the gates for numerous research papers with inappropriately (copy-and-paste) written introduction and discussion sections. It is also known that software is powered to detect copied texts, but fails to highlight parts extensively edited by commercial agents, recycling both words and ideas and fooling the anti-plagiarism system ( 54 ). The practice of copying texts and substituting separate words with synonyms to evade plagiarism detection by software is known as rogeting (after Roget's thesaurus). An appalling example of rogeting was described in connection with a predatory journal, where a book chapter was entirely copied, edited by using synonyms, and re-published ( 55 ).

Scientists continue exploring other automatic options for detecting similarities beyond identical textual matches, which may help detect sophisticated forms of plagiarism. New intelligent computer programs are developed to track inappropriate paraphrasing and summarizing, manipulation of words and synonyms, cross-language plagiarism, and incorrect copying of references and images. There are numerous paraphrasing tricks, including copying verbatim and substituting separate words, which are often used in combination to mask text-borrowing and self-plagiarism. Such writing strategies are known to linguists but not easily recognized by non-experts ( 56 ). Fortunately, a computer-based analysis of lexical, syntactic, and semantic features is now implemented to track inappropriate paraphrasing in suspicious sentences and larger passages of texts ( 57 , 58 ). Promising are also results of studies of cross-language text-borrowing by non-native English speakers, who may copy, translate to English, and edit texts published in their mother tongue ( 59 , 60 ). Intelligent systems are mainly designed to recognize incorrect processing of German, French, and other Roman texts, though few recent studies have also focused on other languages ( 61 ). One of the proposed principles of unmasking cross-language plagiarism is based on analysing keywords in suspicious texts ( 62 ).

Citation-based plagiarism detection is another evolving concept that relies on similarities of order and proximity of references in texts ( 63 ). Related methods employ analyses of published reference lists visible in large bibliographic databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. Combining text and reference list checks increases the chances of detecting plagiarism ( 64 ).

There are also basic search services, such as Google Images, which allow users to retrieve already published graphical material by entering keywords related to the image file name and adjacent text. More advanced algorithms are now designed to track image misappropriation by evaluating the graphical structure and quantifying similarities between original and suspicious files ( 65 ).

Advances in the visualization of scholarly works, including their exposure to social networking sites, may improve the efficiency of detecting and quantifying plagiarism by emerging electronic gadgets ( 66 ). Ultimately, it is believed that a universal plagiarism detection system of cross-checking submissions to all peer-reviewed journals can minimize the number of retractions due to plagiarism, duplication and simultaneous submissions ( 49 ).

LESSONS LEARNED FROM RETRACTIONS

Different types of plagiarism are currently reported in retraction notices, ranging from copy-and-paste writing to more sophisticated manipulations. Examining the motivation and context in such cases is critical for preventing misconduct in the future. Although the number of retractions due to plagiarism is not high (81 [1.6%] of documents in Scopus), the high prevalence of such cases in the medical literature, primarily affecting rapidly developing disciplines and emerging scientific powers, is worrying ( 67 ).

In November 2016, retractions of 58 Iranian articles by impact-factor journals of Springer and BioMed Central have been widely discussed in social media ( 68 ), conveying a strong message to all stakeholders of science communication. The most affected journals were Tumor Biology (25 retractions) and Diagnostic Pathology (23 retractions). The retracted articles were authored by 282 early-career and experienced researchers, who covered issues in cancer, veterinary science, pharmacology, and parasitology and some of whom previously published in predatory journals. An investigation, which was initially prompted by a whistleblower, found evidence of plagiarism in 93% of BMC and 70% of Springer articles that was not detected by software because of manipulations at the submission and peer review ( 69 ). Suspicions were also raised that the retracted articles could be produced by a random paper generator program, which were not confirmed. As a result of the retractions, serial plagiarists were barred from publishing, instructions of the journals were amended to exclude manipulations with authorship and peer review but no changes were announced to upgrade plagiarism detection. That case was followed by 5 more retractions of largely plagiarized Chinese papers on cancer by a Brazilian open-access journal Genetics and Molecular Research ( 70 ).

Plagiarism is a plague of current science and a sign of pseudoscience. Its detection and prevention strategies require a comprehensive approach by all stakeholders of science communication, based on their awareness of the global and local trends in misappropriation of intellectual property. Relying on any single anti-plagiarism tool is not effective. Even powered anti-plagiarism software, designed to track textual overlaps and calculate similarity scores, can be fooled by plagiarists, resorting on manipulative paraphrasing and editing techniques. Editors should manually check all manuscripts after receiving the software-generated similarity percentages to avoid false negative and positive results ( 71 ).

Among all preventive anti-plagiarism strategies, those relying on human factor are probably more reliable. A more active role of authors, reviewers, editors, and readers in the continuum of prevention is advisable. Inexperienced authors need to be updated by research supervisors on what constitutes plagiarism of words, ideas, and graphics. Their disclaimers about honest writing, which are currently requested by some journals (e.g., Journal of Pakistan Medical Association ), may minimize the chances of and increase accountability for any wrongdoing. Reviewers and readers, or whistleblowers, may recognize sentences, larger passages of texts and order of references recycled from their own works and inform editors. Editors, in turn, may prevent certain types of plagiarism by carefully selecting reviewers and performing additional checks of texts and data. They should also be alerted of plagiarism by some reviewers, who may steel data and ideas from processed manuscripts and publish their own unethical articles ( 72 ). Vigilance is also required when students' works are processed as some of them may misappropriate unpublished raw data and publish papers without knowledge of their supervisors and owners of the data ( 73 ).

Plagiarism takes different forms and affects various indexed and non-indexed sources in any language. However, this misconduct is relatively easy to uncover in widely visible English sources. As a prime example, even top scholarly journals have suffered from misappropriation of words and sentences by non-Anglophone and inexperienced authors ( 6 , 74 ). To a certain extent, such a misconduct does not affect the validity of research reports and is correctable ( 8 ). Self-correction in top journals can limit and prevent the growth of unethical papers ( 75 ). What is more pressing is that most non-English and non-indexed low-profile periodicals, covering research of non-mainstream science authors, remain largely in the shadow and escape attention of eagle-eyed readers.

In recent years, predatory publishing has emerged as a serious threat to non-mainstream science ( 76 ). The absence of anti-plagiarism policies in such journals leads to massive online publishing of entirely copied and unchecked papers ( 77 ). The scale of the misconduct and carelessness of the authors may point to the involvement of paper-generating machines and editing agencies with commercial interests and ignorance of norms of scholarly publishing. Recent cases of mass retractions may also be associated with indiscriminate targeting of predatory editing agencies and individual authors, expanding their activities and exploiting the deficiencies of the similarity checks by indexed journals.

Intelligent (semantic) technologies may help detect more cases of plagiarism worldwide and across academic disciplines with inevitable retractions and dire consequences for plagiarists ( 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 ). Authors and editors may curb the problem by adhering to global editorial recommendations, such as those by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). COPE is the largest community of editors with more than 10,000 members from diverse professional and language backgrounds, who are offered a forum for discussing and resolving complex issues of plagiarism ( 82 ). ICMJE with its 15 members, including representatives of top-tier general medical journals, offer annually updated recommendations on proper writing, research reporting, targeting ethical journals, and avoiding research misconduct ( 83 ). The ever-increasing support of the global editorial associations is instrumental for improving writing, reviewing and editing skills of all stakeholders of science communication. Consequently, poor writing and (un)intentional plagiarism is no longer an excuse for wasting resources of the scholarly community ( 84 , 85 ).

DISCLOSURE: The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTION: Conceptualization: Gasparyan AY, Nurmashev B, Kostyukova EI, Kitas GD. Methodology: Gasparyan AY, Nurmashev B, Seksenbayev B. Writing - original draft: Gasparyan AY, Nurmashev B. Writing - review & editing: Gasparyan AY, Nurmashev B, Seksenbayev B, Kostyukova EI, Kitas GD.

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Using Sources, Avoiding Plagiarism, and Academic Honesty

A key expectation of academic work is that what you submit is your own, and that you appropriately source words and ideas that are not your own. Since academic writing involves building on the ideas of others, knowing how to integrate that material with your own thinking is a fundamental skill for success. Writers who simply haven’t practiced that skill may find themselves submitting papers with unintentional plagiarism (which is by far the most common). The resources below explain what plagiarism is, and how to avoid it through careful use of source material, rhetoric, and citations. Please feel free to email us with any thoughts or suggestions!

What is Plagiarism?

Put simply, plagiarism is when you claim the words or ideas of others as your own. Since all work you submit during an academic program is presumed to be yours, even leaving out a citation can lead to unintentional plagiarism. Avoiding plagiarism means knowing how to integrate sources correctly into your writing, understanding the rules of the style guide you’re using, and having a big-picture understanding of academic honesty: the “why” behind all those seemingly arbitrary rules.

• Antioch University Plagiarism Policy

Integrating Sources

Any time you use someone else’s words or ideas (which you do in most academic papers), you need to be careful to track them through your research and drafting phases, attribute them in your writing phases, and ensure they are correctly cited during your final polishing phases. Integrating sources well starts with research–taking good notes, actively synthesizing as you read, and making sure you put other people’s words in quotes in your notes are all ways to avoid accidental plagiarism down the line. As you start to write, you’ll want to use quotations, paraphrases, and syntheses to describe other people’s ideas. Each integrates sources in a different way, and academic writers need to know how to do all three, and when each is appropriate. As you finish your paper, you need to able to include citations in a consistent and appropriate format so that readers of your work can locate the source you used for a given idea. In academic writing, it is expected that your work fits into an ongoing conversation; citing your sources helps your readers know who contributed before you, and how you used their ideas. Reading and Doing Research

• Active Reading Strategies
• Critical Reading Exercises
• Gathering Information
• Evaluating Research Generally
• Evaluating Empirical Research
• The Art of Integrating Sources
• Using Quotations
• A Short Guide to Paraphrasing

Style and Citations

Regardless of your field and specialty, you can rest assured that you will need to cite your sources and abide by the rules of a style guide. These resources focus on helping you manage those expectations, especially around the particulars of things like APA style.

• Citation Managers
• Antioch Seattle MA Psych Style Guidelines
• An Overview of APA Style
• Common Mistakes in APA Style

Other Resources:

• Visit the American Psychological Association website for updated information regarding APA style and formatting guidelines for writing in the psychology and social sciences.
• Visit the Modern Language Association website for updated information regarding MLA style and formatting guidelines for writing in the humanities.

  Academic Honesty

Part of academic writing is also managing your time and working sufficiently in advance to do your work well. If you are working at the last minute or find yourself committed, you may find yourself tempted to leave out a citation, to appropriate a quote, or even to copy and paste text from a source without attribution. While everyone understands the desperation that can lead to academic dishonesty, the choice to engage in intentional plagiarism is a serious breach of conduct with serious consequences. In an academic program, it can lead to your being put on academic probation or kicked out of the University. Beyond student writing, plagiarism can cause you to lose all credibility in your field and destroy your academic or professional career.

Healthy Approaches to Plagiarism: A Collaborative Response

Dorothy Capers,  AUS PsyD Student & Anne Maxham, Ph.D., Director of Writing Support   Plagiarism today goes beyond the flagrant taking of another’s piece of writing and turning it as your own. With the internet, facile copying and pasting of others’ words can wreak havoc on your academic integrity.

Caveat Scriptor!

(Writer Beware!)

Overview: Plagiarism is fundamentally the act of taking others’ words and using them as your own. The range of what identifies as plagiarism is complex: it may be intentional or unintentional; it may be in the form of paraphrases without citing the source, or word for word (seven or more words in sequence from the original source); or padding your writing with longer passages without citations. Being charged with “academic dishonesty” or “plagiarism” is a gut-wrenching experience that no student wants to risk. The impact of being questioned about your authenticity can result in losing confidence as a writer and even have you doubt your purpose in studying at the university. Beyond the emotional effects, other consequences can be dire, and sometimes result in failing the class, being put on academic probation, and worst of all expulsion from the university. All writers need to take precautions and make efforts to ensure that your writing is “all yours” and that you properly cite others’ words and ideas. One scenario of why it can happen to anyone: Many of us now compose directly on the computer and frequently have multiple documents opened at any given time. We “read” to find information to use in our writing. Frequently, we jump from online articles to our own document, copying and pasting material. At times, we’re writing papers with quick deadlines, and we might rush through this all-important step of first understanding the article content. Rather than fully “digesting texts,” we read for important information and key points to include in the paper. Our notes become lifted passages from texts rather than summarizing in our own words. We research and read for “context” rather than the “content”; that is, we read to finish our writing rather than fully understanding the topic or content. What you can do: To avoid unintentional plagiarism, stop long enough in your reading to think about what the author is saying. Put it in your own words. There’s an inherent danger in copying text and pasting into your own notes. And in doing so, writers can naively create a “fertile environment” for plagiarism to occur.  And it happens not just in academia. Take a look at what happened to well-known authors, and the consequences can ruin a career. Or musicians and the long lawsuits that follow. Remember, James Frey and the scandal after Oprah had selected his Million Little Pieces as one of her “reads”? Oprah felt betrayed and used. Her anger was palpable when she publicly lambasted him in her program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewC-KIe5qng http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2011/1208/5-famous-plagiarism-and-fraud-accusations-in-the-book-world/Alex-Haley And recently, Neil Gorsuch was accused of plagiarizing parts of his book: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/gorsuch-writings-supreme-court-236891 So, we’ve developed this resource to help students take proactive measures to be academically honest. Before we move into the nitty gritty, we have some fundamentals:

• First, create a “working bibliography” of your resources. Put a number or a letter next to each and use that notation next to your quotes & paraphrases. That way, the sources for all quotes/paraphrases are identified.
• Cite all direct quotes, paraphrases, statistics, and unique ideas. Take the extra time to put quotation marks around words that are not yours. And don’t forget to post the page number of all direct quotes.
• direct quotes = citation
• paraphrases = citation
• statistics = citation
• unique concepts = citation
• when in doubt = citation
• If you’re not sure, you should seek writing support with your writing center or the VWC.

The Academic Conversation For those who want to write original work, learning how to enter the academic conversation is fundamental. While the academy is a place for active debate, most of us read materials given to us as passive “voyeurs” of a text. Of course, this is saying something about the implicit/explicit power dynamic between the faculty member and the student. Do we read to highlight what we think the faculty member wants us to read? Or do we read to wrestle with ideas? Frankly, given the reality that most of us read multiple texts each week, we’re lucky if we “digest” even one text.  The fact that most of us read – or submit a text— seldom questioning its content, style, or the intent of the author shows that we may be disempowered in the academic enterprise. Many students don’t realize that writing forces a reader to “digest” the material and to summarize as well as validate assertions by referring to the experts. So, active reading is essential in bringing the reader into the discourse. Since there are deep and multiple connections between reading and writing, we all need to learn and use strategies of active, critical reading (See the VWC Resources: “ Active Reading Strategies” and “ Critical Reading Exercises” )

If we think about academic reading and writing as a conversation, students have to carry the researchers forward in the conversation, even those with opposing views. Writing a paper is entering the conversation in an attempt to inform the reader of your unique learning through summarizing, paraphrasing, and citing other researchers. Ways to ensure Academic Authenticity: Validating that your writing is authentically yours and accurately reflecting your understanding of the topic begins early in your writing process.  Before writing, verify that you understand the assignment. Ask questions and request examples from the faculty member. Remember, what your instructors wants in an assignment is most important for your success. If you don’t understand, ask classmates and go to the writing center for additional support. Taking Notes: Take “real notes”: Don’t just lift full lines or passages from your reading. Be sure to write all notes in your own words, or put quotes around texts. If you’ve paraphrased, you still need to cite. So, put ( ) and the author, date, pg number. Defining the goals of your literature review will guide both your reading and your note-taking.   Peg Single Boyle, author of Demystifying Dissertation Writing (2009), offers a clear approach to “Citable Notetaking”:

• Pre-read your articles before taking notes
• Keep track of what’s summarized, paraphrased, or quoted.
• Choose  consistent formats for your notes. For example: If more than one article set up a spreadsheet to identify authors, article theme and quotes and paraphrases. This will help with putting your outline together when you start to write  (p 55-78).

The Virtual Writing Center has other resources available at the top of this page to help guide you to academic success. Tutorials: Want to see how much you know or don’t know about plagiarism? Spend a productive hour watching the tutorials and then take the “Certification Test” at the Indiana University resource: Tutorial: https://www.indiana.edu/~academy/firstPrinciples/tutorials/index.html Test: https://www.indiana.edu/~academy/firstPrinciples/certificationTests/index.html Finally: As a member of a discipline, you’re responsible to learn the style sheet of your field of practice (APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.).  Use online resources and manuals relevant to your field. If you’re unclear, seek help and work one-one with Mentor/VWC.  If you want professional help, go to the AU Writers’ Exchange (wex.antioch.edu).  Also review this handy checklist for APA Style that was designed for writers to refer to prior to submitting their papers. Writing support is designed to help students. With friendly student peer consultants, you may talk about your writing and get the support you need. You’re not alone.    References Boyle, P.S. (2009).  Demystifying dissertation writing. Stylus Pub: New York.

Resources for Faculty

• Responding to Plagiarism
• Plagiarism Checklist for Faculty

Academic Resources: Bronwyn T. Williams (2008). Trust, betrayal, and authorship: Plagiarism and how we perceive students.   Journal of Adolescent and and Adult Literacy 51 :4, 350 – 354. Abstract: Emotional responses to plagiarism are rarely addressed in professional literature that focuses on ethics and good teaching practices. Yet, the emotions that are unleashed by cases of plagiarism, or suspicions of plagiarism, influence how we perceive our students and how we approach teaching them. Such responses have been complicated by online plagiarism-detection services that emphasize surveillance and detection. My opposition to such plagiarism software services grows from the conviction that if we use them we are not only poisoning classroom relationships, but also we are missing important opportunities for teaching.

Howard, R., & Robillard, A. (2008). Pluralizing plagiarism : Identities, contexts, pedagogies . Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Pluralizing Plagiarism offers multiple answers to this question — answers that insist on taking into account the rhetorical situations in which plagiarism occurs. While most scholarly publications on plagiarism mirror mass media’s attempts to reduce the issue to simple black-and-white statements, the contributors to Pluralizing Plagiarism recognize that it takes place not in universalized realms of good and bad, but in specific contexts in which students’ cultural backgrounds often play a role. Teachers concerned about plagiarism can best address the issue in the classroom — especially the first-year composition classroom — as part of writing pedagogy and not just as a matter for punishment and prohibition. . . “–Back cover.

Price, M. (2002). Beyond “Gotcha!”: Situating plagiarism in policy and pedagogy. College Composition and Communication, 54 (1), 88-115 Abstract:Plagiarism is difficult, if not impossible, to define. In this paper, I argue for a context-sensitive understanding of plagiarism by analyzing a set of written institutional policies and suggesting ways that they might be revised. In closing, I offer examples of classroom practices to help teach a concept of plagiarism as situated in context.

How to Avoid Plagiarism in Research Papers (Part 1)

Writing a research paper poses challenges in gathering literature and providing evidence for making your paper stronger. Drawing upon previously established ideas and values and adding pertinent information in your paper are necessary steps, but these need to be done with caution without falling into the trap of plagiarism . In order to understand how to avoid plagiarism , it is important to know the different types of plagiarism that exist.

What is Plagiarism in Research?

Plagiarism is the unethical practice of using words or ideas (either planned or accidental) of another author/researcher or your own previous works without proper acknowledgment. Considered as a serious academic and intellectual offense, plagiarism can result in highly negative consequences such as paper retractions and loss of author credibility and reputation. It is currently a grave problem in academic publishing and a major reason for paper retractions .

It is thus imperative for researchers to increase their understanding about plagiarism. In some cultures, academic traditions and nuances may not insist on authentication by citing the source of words or ideas. However, this form of validation is a prerequisite in the global academic code of conduct. Non-native English speakers  face a higher challenge of communicating their technical content in English as well as complying with ethical rules. The digital age too affects plagiarism. Researchers have easy access to material and data on the internet which makes it easy to copy and paste information.

Related: Conducting literature survey and wish to learn more about scientific misconduct? Check out this resourceful infographic today!

How Can You Avoid Plagiarism in a Research Paper?

Guard yourself against plagiarism, however accidental it may be. Here are some guidelines to avoid plagiarism.

1. Paraphrase your content

• Do not copy–paste the text verbatim from the reference paper. Instead, restate the idea in your own words.
• Understand the idea(s) of the reference source well in order to paraphrase correctly.
• Examples on good paraphrasing can be found here ( https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QPA_paraphrase.html )

2. Use Quotations

Use quotes to indicate that the text has been taken from another paper. The quotes should be exactly the way they appear in the paper you take them from.

3. Cite your Sources – Identify what does and does not need to be cited

• The best way to avoid the misconduct of plagiarism is by self-checking your documents using plagiarism checker tools.
• Any words or ideas that are not your own but taken from another paper  need to be cited .
• Cite Your Own Material—If you are using content from your previous paper, you must cite yourself. Using material you have published before without citation is called self-plagiarism .
• The scientific evidence you gathered after performing your tests should not be cited.
• Facts or common knowledge need not be cited. If unsure, include a reference.

4. Maintain records of the sources you refer to

• Maintain records of the sources you refer to. Use citation software like EndNote or Reference Manager to manage the citations used for the paper
• Use multiple references for the background information/literature survey. For example, rather than referencing a review, the individual papers should be referred to and cited.

5. Use plagiarism checkers

You can use various plagiarism detection tools such as iThenticate or HelioBLAST (formerly eTBLAST) to see how much of your paper is plagiarised .

Tip: While it is perfectly fine to survey previously published work, it is not alright to paraphrase the same with extensive similarity. Most of the plagiarism occurs in the literature review section of any document (manuscript, thesis, etc.). Therefore, if you read the original work carefully, try to understand the context, take good notes, and then express it to your target audience in your own language (without forgetting to cite the original source), then you will never be accused with plagiarism (at least for the literature review section).

Caution: The above statement is valid only for the literature review section of your document. You should NEVER EVER use someone else’s original results and pass them off as yours!

What strategies do you adopt to maintain content originality? What advice would you share with your peers? Please feel free to comment in the section below.

If you would like to know more about patchwriting, quoting, paraphrasing and more, read the next article in this series!

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Ultimate Plagiarism Guide for College Students (24 Quick Q&As)

This is the most comprehensive plagiarism guide for college students who are interested in learning about everything related to plagiarism in college.

In this new guide, you’ll learn everything ranging from what plagiarism is to how to avoid plagiarism as a college student.

(Including lots of answered questions that have never been shared on any website before.)

Let’s dive right in:

Table of Contents

1. What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism (also be referred to as infringement of copyright) is a term that is used to denote when a person presents another person’s words, sounds, images, ideas, or language; whether in print or electronic form, as his/her own without properly acknowledging the real owner of this intellectual property.

2. What is Self-plagiarism?

Self-plagiarism is when a student reuses or resubmits an old research paper, college essay, or college paper that has been previously submitted by him/her as a new research paper, college essay, or college paper in another assignment without properly referencing this old, already submitted paper where the idea, word, sound, image, or language was drawn from.

3. What is Considered Plagiarism in College?

Plagiarism in college usually occurs when a student takes full credit for another person’s work either by simply copying and pasting this person’s work intentionally or unintentionally on a college essay or research paper or by simply buying a paper entirely written by someone else and using this bought paper as their own research or college paper.

4. What is The Punishment For Plagiarism in College?

There are different penal codes put in place for plagiarism policy defaulters in college .

In college, violation of the plagiarism policy can result in an automatic reduction of your grades, failing you with an F in that specific assignment or course, college sanctions for you, as well as a possibility of being temporarily suspended or completely expelled from your college based on the gravity of the offense.

5. Why is Plagiarism An Important Issue in College?

Plagiarism is an important issue in college because of the rising number of plagiarism defaulters. 

Colleges considered it as a breach of academic integrity by offenders who aim to belittle the institution’s scholarly standards that have been put in place, as well as undervalue the degree that is awarded to other students who strive and work hard to earn their degrees fairly and squarely. 

6. How Do Students Commit Plagiarism?

According to Turnitin , there are a couple of ways by which a student can commit plagiarism. Like:

• Copying and pasting a complete article without any change
• Finding and replacing some words within a paper
• Patching together different materials to form a single article
• Self-plagiarising your own work
• A hybrid combination of cited and uncited sources
• A mashup of different disjointed papers to create a paper that lacks flow
• Using false citations that do not exist or correlate with the article
• Using citations without inputting your own original idea

7. How Serious is Plagiarism in College?

Plagiarism is a very serious offense in college thanks to the ever-increasing amount of students who engage in the act whether intentionally or not.

There have also been different rules put in place, with consequences ranging from a mild reprimand to complete student expulsion just to show the level of seriousness at which colleges and institutions now place on plagiarism amongst students in college.

8. How Can College Students Avoid Plagiarism?

As a college student who wishes to avoid plagiarism in your college paper, there are a couple of ways by which you can do this .

To avoid plagiarism as a college student:

• Understand clearly what plagiarism really means for students in your institution
• Properly cite any academic article or sources you use in your college essay or research paper
• Keep uncited information sources for your college paper or assignment securely in a folder for future purpose
• Paraphrase or reword your writing in an original way that is completely different from your research source
• Uniquely present your idea and add new ideas as well
• Quote sources that are written in your college paper or texts which aren’t yours
• Use a plagiarism checker to check for plagiarism after completing your college essay or research paper

9. What Are The Consequences For Plagiarism?

In college, there are serious consequences for plagiarizing another person’s work as your own without properly citing or giving due respect to the original owner of the plagiarized material.

According to Bowdin university , the consequences vary between :

• Failure on the plagiarized assignment
• Grade reduction in the specific course
• Failure on the specific course
• Suspension of the offender
• Complete expulsion and removal of the offender from the student database

10. Which Tool Can You Use To Check For Plagiarism?

As a college student, there are numerous free and paid online tools to help you check for plagiarism in your research paper, college paper, college essay, or assignment.

Some of these tools include:

1. Grammarly (Score: 5/5)

Best online plagiarism checker for all students

Grammarly is an online writing tool that helps to detect grammar and punctuation errors, plagiarism, writing style, and spelling checks in a college student’s essay or research paper.

• Overall writing function for extensive purposes
• Seamless performance
• Easy to use
• Doesn’t ignore spelling errors in cases of business words or nouns
• Not 100% accurate in grammar correction

Click here to experience Grammarly!

2. Copyleaks (Score: 5/5)

Best proofreading tool for students

Copyleaks is an online plagiarism checker with an extensive database of academic resources which are most times not found on other plagiarism tools.

• Parses PDF files easily
• Intuitive interface
• Good customer service
• Saves scanned documents to its database
• Plagiarism point checkers are expensive to purchase

3. Turnitin (Score: 4/5)

Best for professors and tutors

Turnitin is an online plagiarism tool that is used to check for originality of any text inputted into its broad database.

• Useful for college professors
• Supports a wide variety of files
• Fantastic, feature-rich tools
• Lacks internet access for grading college paper
• Takes a longer period of time to generate similarity report

4. Unicheck (Score: 4/5)

Best plagiarism check for students and professionals

Unicheck is an online tool that scans documents and text against a wide array of other texts on the internet and files in its own database.

• Userfriendly interface
• Thorough scanning of texts
• Only copy-paste option available

11. What Are Some Free Plagiarism Checkers For College Students?

Whether you want to check your research paper, college paper, college essay, or college assignment for plagiarism, there are different free online plagiarism tools for you to use as a college student.

Some of these free plagiarism checking tools include:

• Plagiarisma
• Small SEO tools
• Search engine reports
• Pre-post SEO
• Duplichecker

12. How Do Professors Detect Plagiarism?

College professors have years of experience in the subject they lecture and have pored over thousands of hours worth of information in that specific course.

If a student submits a plagiarized work, most college professors can detect it by simply reading through the paper or assignment. 

For college assignments submitted online, the college’s canvas turn-it-in system already has a built-in text matcher that simply scans through the student’s paper or essay for plagiarism and returns the plagiarism score to the professors if it is a plagiarized work.

13. Can Professors Detect Plagiarism on Hard Copy?

Yes, college professors can detect plagiarism on a student’s college paper or research paper in hard copy.

All the professor has to do is read through the introduction, conclusion, and the body of the college essay or assignment, and if he finds that it sounds like something he has read before, the professor can simply search for a sentence from this paper on Google by including quotation marks in order to check if there’s an article with the exact sentence match on the internet.

14 . How Serious is Self-plagiarism?

While self-plagiarism isn’t as serious as other forms of plagiarism which all tend to focus on you using someone else’s work, it still is a serious matter that has consequences, if the school’s policy isn’t adhered to .

At the University of Oklahoma , if a student is caught self-plagiarizing, such student can be awarded a zero on the assignment, fail the class exam, and/or be forced to take a remedial class on academic integrity.

15. Can You Plagiarize Yourself in College?

Yes, you can plagiarize yourself in college.

This process of plagiarizing yourself in college is what is known as self-plagiarism , and even though it isn’t as severe as other types of plagiarism, it still has its consequences if your professors’ guidelines aren’t adhered to.

16. Do Professors Check For Self-plagiarism?

Yes, professors do check for self-plagiarism.

For assignments or college essays submitted online, most colleges have an online plagiarism detection software for professors like Turnitin that simply checks for any and every form of plagiarism, including self-plagiarism of a submitted assignment or college essay.

It is therefore advisable to speak with your college professor if you do have an assignment or college paper that is similar to the current assignment given by your professor, and to properly cite this old material to avoid being penalized for self-plagiarism.

17. Do Professors Always Check For Plagiarism?

Yes, they do. These days, professors spend time checking for plagiarism while grading a student’s research paper, college paper, college essay, or assignment.

Most college professors already understand how to use online plagiarism tools like Turnitin which makes checking for plagiarism easier, and as such, checking for plagiarism with the aid of these online plagiarism-checking tools makes it easier for them to always check for plagiarism.

18. What Do You Do When Your Professor Accuses You of Plagiarism?

If you believe you have been wrongly accused of plagiarism by your college professor, there are a couple of steps you can take to appeal this claim .

Some of the steps to take to appeal your professor’s plagiarism claim include:

• Discussing the issue with your professor and showing the citations of sources you used
• Asking your professor for proof of plagiarism
• Asking for a review of your college paper by another professor
• Appealing to the faculty dean about the issue
• Having a higher authority get involved in the matter
• Follow the formal appeal process of your university

19. How Much Plagiarism is Allowed in College?

In college, copying someone else’s words without giving credit is never allowed, implying that 0% plagiarism isn’t allowed.

However, in cases of similarity reports like in mathematics, computer science, biology, etc., it is impossible not to use calculations, general formulas, or statements and terminologies, hence between a 5%-15% plagiarism score is allowed by some professors.

20. Is It Possible To Accidentally Plagiarize?

Yes, it is possible to accidentally plagiarize your college essay or research paper. This form of plagiarism is called accidental plagiarism .

Accidental plagiarism usually happens as a result of forgetfully not citing a source you used, or due to poor paraphrasing most times.

21 . What Happens If You Accidentally Plagiarize?

If you have no prior history of plagiarization, and you unintentionally or accidentally plagiarize your college essay , college paper, assignment, or research paper, your professor would most likely lower your grade in that specific paper or have you failed in the course.

You will also be expected to attend a plagiarism workshop so you can learn more about plagiarism and how to prevent it in the future.

22. How Can You Save Yourself From Plagiarism?

According to scribbr plagiarism checker , there are four tips to save college students from plagiarism in their college essays, assignments, or research paper.

These tips include:

• Noting down the full details of the sources you used while writing
• Quoting sources you used in your paper properly
• Including proper citations of the sources you used
• Confirming with an online plagiarism checker tool whether or not your paper has any plagiarized source

23. Can Plagiarism Checkers Detect Essays Bought Online?

Yes, online plagiarism tools like Turnitin have successfully devised a way to check and detect essays bought from third-party sources now.

Turnitin has developed a new software, the Turnitin Authorship Attribution software that compares students writing style and patterns on their submitted college paper, research paper, or assignments with their old assignments or prior submitted work. The software then analyses the document and offers a score on the probability of contract cheating by the student.

24. Are Online Plagiarism Checkers Accurate?

No, online plagiarism checkers are not 100% accurate in detecting plagiarism in students’ work, but they however have helped to breach the ever-growing trend of plagiarism across universities around the world.

Free plagiarism checker by EasyBib

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Understanding External Validity and its Role in Research Design

This essay discusses external validity in scientific research and its significance in ensuring that study findings are applicable beyond specific experimental conditions. It examines how external validity helps researchers determine whether results can be generalized to different populations, settings, and contexts. The essay highlights challenges in achieving high external validity due to the specificity of research environments, participant characteristics, and timing. It also explains strategies like replication studies and field experiments that help increase the generalizability of results. The essay emphasizes the importance of balancing internal and external validity, acknowledging that while highly controlled studies can ensure internal accuracy, they might not reflect real-world conditions. Ultimately, external validity is crucial for producing research that informs effective policies, clinical guidelines, and societal changes.

How it works

Within the domain of scientific inquiry, the concept of external validity assumes paramount importance, serving as a linchpin for ensuring the relevance and broad applicability of research findings beyond the confines of a singular study. Put succinctly, external validity scrutinizes the extent to which the outcomes of a given investigation can be extrapolated to diverse populations, environments, temporal epochs, or contextual milieus. This conceptual framework assumes significance by bridging the chasm between meticulously controlled research settings and the kaleidoscopic intricacies of real-world scenarios, thereby furnishing researchers with the assurance that their conclusions possess trans-situational validity.

External validity assumes a pivotal role in buttressing the overall veracity of scientific inquiry, furnishing scientists with the means to discern whether their revelations hold substantive import and utility for wider swathes of humanity. Nonetheless, attaining elevated levels of external validity often presents an arduous undertaking owing to the idiosyncratic nature of experimental methodologies. Numerous investigations are conducted within controlled environs or with highly circumscribed samples to mitigate the influence of confounding variables, thereby complicating the process of extrapolating findings to disparate cohorts. For instance, a psychological study confined to the precincts of university campuses might furnish insights germane solely to that demographic stratum, precluding facile generalization to alternative age cohorts or cultural constellations.

Pivotal determinants impinging upon external validity encompass the demographic attributes of study participants, the ambient ambiance of experimental locales, and the temporal dynamics of data accrual. Researchers routinely resort to random sampling methodologies to obviate selection biases and assemble a heterogeneous cohort reflective of the broader populace. The ambient setting assumes salience as outcomes gleaned within sterile laboratory settings might not seamlessly transmute into real-world vicinities. Furthermore, external validity can be influenced by the temporal dimension of investigations, particularly when grappling with phenomena susceptible to temporal vicissitudes induced by cultural, economic, or technological flux.

Researchers endeavor to fortify external validity through recourse to replication studies, which seek to reproduce experimental paradigms under varying conditions to corroborate the robustness of findings. Engaging in multi-site investigations spanning disparate geographical realms or demographic constituencies also serves to validate the generalizability of findings across multifarious locales and participant profiles. Augmenting the verisimilitude of study designs by approximating real-world conditions more faithfully or deploying field experiments conducted within natural habitats constitutes an additional stratagem employed to enhance external validity.

Nonetheless, a judicious equilibrium between internal and external validity is indispensable. While internal validity safeguards against spurious attributions of causality by delineating the genuine effects attributable to independent variables as opposed to extraneous factors, an undue emphasis on this facet may inadvertently compromise external validity. For instance, a rigorously controlled laboratory investigation might succeed in eradicating most confounding variables but might concurrently engender an artificial milieu divorced from real-world veracity.

On occasion, external validity is consciously sacrificed to scrutinize a phenomenon within a specific subgroup or contextual milieu. Clinical trials, for instance, might pivot towards patients exhibiting highly circumscribed medical afflictions or demographic profiles. While such findings might lack broad generalizability, they furnish invaluable insights germane to the target demographic.

In summation, the salience of external validity cannot be overstated. Research endeavors endeavoring to inform policy formulation, clinical dictums, or societal transformations necessitate a degree of generalizability to obviate the formulation of recommendations that are ineffectual or even deleterious. Researchers ought to meticulously orchestrate their investigations, cognizant of the demographic cohorts and environmental terrains that their findings aspire to impact. By acknowledging and redressing the vicissitudes of external validity, scientists can engender more resilient and universally applicable research findings that withstand the rigors of real-world complexity.

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Call for High School Projects

Machine learning for social impact .

The Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024) is an interdisciplinary conference that brings together researchers in machine learning, neuroscience, statistics, optimization, computer vision, natural language processing, life sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, and other adjacent fields. 

This year, we invite high school students to submit research papers on the topic of machine learning for social impact.  A subset of finalists will be selected to present their projects virtually and will have their work spotlighted on the NeurIPS homepage.  In addition, the leading authors of up to five winning projects will be invited to attend an award ceremony at NeurIPS 2024 in Vancouver.  

Each submission must describe independent work wholly performed by the high school student authors.  We expect each submission to highlight either demonstrated positive social impact or the potential for positive social impact using machine learning. Application areas may include but are not limited to the following:

• Agriculture
• Climate change
• Homelessness
• Food security
• Mental health
• Water quality

Authors will be asked to confirm that their submissions accord with the NeurIPS code of conduct and the NeurIPS code of ethics .

Submission deadline: All submissions must be made by June 27th, 4pm EDT. The system will close after this time, and no further submissions will be possible.

We are using OpenReview to manage submissions. Papers should be submitted here . Submission will open June 1st.  Submissions under review will be visible only to their assigned program committee. We will not be soliciting comments from the general public during the reviewing process. Anyone who plans to submit a paper as an author or a co-author will need to create (or update) their OpenReview profile by the full paper submission deadline. 

Formatting instructions:   All submissions must be in PDF format. Submissions are limited to four content pages , including all figures and tables; additional pages containing only references are allowed. You must format your submission using the NeurIPS 2024 LaTeX style file using the “preprint” option for non-anonymous submission. The maximum file size for submissions is 50MB. Submissions that violate the NeurIPS style (e.g., by decreasing margins or font sizes) or page limits may be rejected without further review.  Papers may be rejected without consideration of their merits if they fail to meet the submission requirements, as described in this document. 

Mentorship and collaboration:  The submitted research can be a component of a larger research endeavor involving external collaborators, but the submission should describe only the authors’ contributions.  The authors can also have external mentors but must disclose the nature of the mentorship.  At the time of submission, the authors will be asked to describe the involvement of any mentors or external collaborators and to distinguish mentor and collaborator contributions from those of the authors.  In addition, the authors may (optionally) include an acknowledgements section acknowledging the contributions of others following the content sections of the submission. The acknowledgements section will not count toward the submission page limit.

Proof of high school attendance: Submitting authors will also be asked to upload a signed letter, on school letterhead, from each author’s high school confirming that the author was enrolled in high school during the 2023-2024 academic year.

Supplementary artifacts:  In their submission, authors may link to supplementary artifacts including videos, working demonstrations, digital posters, websites, or source code.  Please do not link to additional text.  All such supplementary material should be wholly created by the authors and should directly support the submission content. 

Review process:   Each submission will be reviewed by anonymous referees. The authors, however, should not be anonymous. No written feedback will be provided to the authors.  

Use of Large Language Models (LLMs): We welcome authors to use any tool that is suitable for preparing high-quality papers and research. However, we ask authors to keep in mind two important criteria. First, we expect papers to fully describe their methodology.  Any tool that is important to that methodology, including the use of LLMs, should be described also. For example, authors should mention tools (including LLMs) that were used for data processing or filtering, visualization, facilitating or running experiments, or proving theorems. It may also be advisable to describe the use of LLMs in implementing the method (if this corresponds to an important, original, or non-standard component of the approach). Second, authors are responsible for the entire content of the paper, including all text and figures, so while authors are welcome to use any tool they wish for writing the paper, they must ensure that all text is correct and original.

Dual submissions:  Submissions that are substantially similar to papers that the authors have previously published or submitted in parallel to other peer-reviewed venues with proceedings or journals may not be submitted to NeurIPS. Papers previously presented at workshops or science fairs are permitted, so long as they did not appear in a conference proceedings (e.g., CVPRW proceedings), a journal, or a book.  However, submissions will not be published in formal proceedings, so work submitted to this call may be published elsewhere in the future. Plagiarism is prohibited by the NeurIPS Code of Conduct .

Paper checklist: In order to improve the rigor and transparency of research submitted to and published at NeurIPS, authors are required to complete a paper checklist . The paper checklist is intended to help authors reflect on a wide variety of issues relating to responsible machine learning research, including reproducibility, transparency, research ethics, and societal impact. The checklist does not count towards the page limit and will be entered in OpenReview.

Contact:   [email protected]

Earlham sophomore to present research paper at World Congress of Philosophy in Rome

RICHMOND, Ind. — Plato, a famous philosopher who lived in ancient Greece, once said " There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world."

The mere concept of "world" will now be presented at the 25th World Congress of Philosophy in Rome, Italy Aug. 4 by an Earlham College student.

Sophomore Jimmy Freiberger will present his research paper titled "Exposition of World and Comportment Toward World in Heidegger" to philosophers from all around the world. This will be Freiberger's first presentation to an outside conference, according to an Earlham College press release.

Freiberger's paper was originally an assignment for his philosophy class taught by Professor Ferit Güven. Freiberger said in a news release he was inspired to write the paper through his own advocacy.

“As someone who is interested in helping create a better world, I want to understand what the world is first,” he said in the release. “I feel like, too often, in advocacy we might jump headfirst into something in the pursuit of changing the world, without first questioning if we have the ability to change the world or if the world is something that would allow itself to be changed.”

This year's theme for the conference, typically held every five years, is "Philosophy across Boundaries" and will be held from Aug. 1 to Aug. 8. The aim of the conference is to "foster scholarly and public reflections on the future of our societies," according to its website.

“This will include philosophers from all over the world and I’ll be reading in front of a large crowd, but even if I receive harsh criticism, that’s good, right?” Freiberger said. “There are very few other opportunities to receive that degree of feedback.”

Freiberger was also awarded the Endeavor Fellowship which allows him to participate in the 2024 Athens Democracy Forum from Oct. 1 to Oct. 4. The theme of the forum is “A Moment of Truth,” and attendees will be urged to question topics related to climate technology, journalism and the very state of democracy.

Part of why Freiberger enjoys philosophy is the ability to invoke communication and question life itself.

“Through philosophy, we can call into question our participation in the structures and institutions of daily life, and recognize their absurdities,” he said in the release. “We’re developing and forming our ideas through dialogue with our professors and peers. I think that’s very valuable.”

Upon receiving his degree from Earlham, Freiberger plans to enter a dual program to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy and a J.D. in law, which he hopes to use to become a civil rights attorney and eventually president of the United States.

Evan Weaver is a news and sports reporter at The Palladium-Item. Contact him on X (@evan_weaver7) or email at [email protected].