Research paper and thesis writing is a unique skill that only comes with great research, practice, and training. Research papers and thesis are generally written by Ph.D. and Master’s students. Every university has its guidelines, criteria, and format for writing research papers and theses. Therefore, as a student, you should ask your professor or consult some old papers from your university alumni before starting yours.
Although the guide or format may differ from university to university, plagiarism is unacceptable everywhere. The reason behind the illegality of plagiarism is its unfairness. One can enjoy perks on the hard work of someone else by using plagiarized content. That is why universities don’t allow any sort of plagiarism in research papers and theses.
In today’s guide, we have collected some useful tips to avoid plagiarism when writing a research paper or thesis.
Choose Unique Topics
Topic selection can somehow save you from plagiarism. Doing research and writing a thesis on topics that have already been covered by many students can become a cause for plagiarism. The more specific you go with topic selection the chances for plagiarism increase. Therefore, choose a broader topic that has much content for research.
Moreover, discover new and unique topics instead of improving and adding to old topics. Unique topics always have lesser content on the internet or already published research papers and theses. Therefore, the chances of plagiarism decrease.
Think Innovative
You need to be an innovative thinker to avoid plagiarism when writing a research paper. After topic selection now it’s a phase to think about the content you are going to write. If you start writing similarly to people who have already written on the same topic, there are chances that you can get trapped by plagiarism.
That is why you have to think differently. Doing in-depth research and asking people can help you think innovatively. Remember, an innovative research paper and thesis is more acknowledgeable than a lengthy one. Mixing up ideas from various sources and summing them up in your thesis can make it innovative.
Conduct In-depth Research
In-depth research can also save your research paper and thesis from plagiarism. Considering Google as your only research option can make your content plagiarized because the majority of researchers perform research on Google. If you come out of the box and start researching from other sources along with Google, you can avoid plagiarism. These sources may include Google Scholar, books, old publications, etc.
Performing in-depth research takes much time and effort but instead of getting your thesis rejected, it is better to dedicate time and perform good research. You may ask your university librarian to suggest related books and research papers according to your selected topic.
Cite the Sources Properly
It is another way you can save your research paper and thesis from plagiarism. Citing the sources and adding references in the bibliographic section at the end of your work is very necessary. Whenever you take something from someone’s work and use it in your research paper or thesis, it is obligatory to give credit.
Therefore, cite the sentences, paragraphs, pictures, or what else you have taken as references in your work. The format of citation varies from university to university, for example, most American universities follow (APA Style Citations) while Engineering universities accept (the IEEE citation format).
An APA-style citation for a book can look like this:
In-text:
(Sapolsky,2017)
Bibliography:
Sapolsky,R.M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Books.
This is a reference to a complete book. References can change depending on the type of source. You can read this guide to get all the information about the APA style. There are other formats as well, such as Chicago, and MLA, which you can look up. Do remember that you have to use the citation style that is mandated by your institute.
Just to be Safe…
Even if you take all the steps that you can to avoid plagiarism, there is still a fair chance that your work will have some copied content. This could be due to forgetfulness, or pure luck.
Check for Plagiarism
Whatever the reason may be, and no matter how confident you are in the uniqueness of your work, you have to check your paper/thesis for plagiarism once you have finished writing it.
To check for plagiarism in your work, you have to rely on a plagiarism-checking tool such as the one by Check-Plagiarism, Copyscape, or Turnitin.
A plagiarism detector uses smart algorithms to read your content and finds similar content on the internet. It can search for similarities in research papers, articles, blogs, online books, and publications available online.
Eliminate Plagiarism
If you do end up finding some coincidental plagiarism, then you need to take care of it. There are three ways in which you can do that.
- Remove the plagiarized content
- Cite it
- If none of the above are possible/applicable, then take care of it by using online tools.
The first method is quite straightforward. You only need to think about whether the removal of the content will distort the sense of the work or not. If the removal does not affect anything, then do it.
You already know what citations are, and how to cite, so we will check out the last method of removing plagiarism. You basically have to paraphrase the content, so that its wording changes and it no longer matches with the “source”.
You can do it yourself, or you can get a plagiarism fixer like Plagiarismremover.net, or Wordtune.com to do it for you. Either way, the results will be beneficial for you.
Conclusion
We have tried to include the best and most effective ways to avoid plagiarism when writing a research paper or thesis at university. A quality and well research thesis can become a piece of appreciation and recognition for you. Therefore, always try to give your best while writing yours. Hope you find the above tips or ways helpful for plagiarism prevention. Thanks for the read!
