How to Avoid Plagiarism in Academic Writing

Before you learn how to avoid plagiarism in academic writing, you should know what the definition of plagiarism is.

What is considered plagiarism?

Plagiarism refers using other people’s work (or even ideas) as your own without permission or authorization. For example, when you write an essay, if you simply copy and paste a paragraph word-by-word from a text book; or when you write a research paper, if you use other people’s results (previously published in their papers) to support your idea without accurately acknowledging or referencing them, you are committing plagiarism. Plagiarism is not only limited to using other people’s words or formats, but also to using other people’s unique idea. It is perfectly legal when you write your own thoughts in your own words. But you have to avoid plagiarism when writing about other people’s ideas even in your own words. If these ideas are universally available, you are fine not acknowledging the sources. If these ideas are unique to certain works, you should give the original authors credit by referring to their work in your article, otherwise you are plagiarizing.

How to avoid plagiarism in academic writing?

The simple answer is accurately adding references for all other people’s work you cited in your own writing. Plagiarism is against the copyright law. People seldom intentionally plagiarize in academic writing since they will risk their career. But sometime people accidentally conduct plagiarism because they don’t know how to acknowledge other people’s work properly and accurately, and some of them don’t even know they have to add references in their writing when they use other people’s ideas.

If you don’t know how to put references properly, you should try to write with your own experience, thoughts and observations and avoid citing other people’s work. This sounds easy and simple, but in reality, it is almost impossible because most of time you need to collect solid evidence to support your arguments in academic writing.

The next question is how to refer sources of information correctly in the academic writing. There are many ways you can put references in your article, for example, putting them in the text or listing at the end of your article. No matter you cite information from books, journal articles, magazine or newpapers, you should always acknowledge your information sources, which is a way to thank the original authors for their contribution.

Write your own article in your own words. Even with proper reference, you should not copy and paste other people’s words when presenting their ideas. You should rewrite or paraphrase their original text and put your own style in it. When you have to cite other people’s text word-by-word, you have to put them in quotation marks preceded or followed by the original author’s name.

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net