7 Effective Ways to Avoid Plagiarism in Research Papers

One of the worst things that students can face while writing an academic assignment is plagiarism. It decreases a grade for work to zero and can lead to very serious negative consequences for a student.

 

You have to make all possible efforts to avoid it, and we have prepared for you seven effective pieces of advice that can help you to write your research successfully. 

 

These are the 7 Effective Ways to Avoid Plagiarism in Research Papers

Cite

The first and the easiest way to avoid plagiarism is to cite properly. The keyword here is properly because incorrect citing also can be considered as a type of plagiarism. The proper citing includes a few following points: 

• Citation style
• Source
• Page or paragraph

Let’s review these items in more detail. There are several citation styles, such as APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and others. All of them have their own specifics. It can be the obvious differences. For example, APA requires a title page, and MLA doesn’t. But there also can be some details that are no less important. For instance, in APA, you have to write p. for a page before its number, and in MLA, you don’t. 

As for the sources, an academic writer can confuse and put a reference to the wrong author. This case is especially highly likely when one works with many sources. In such a situation, it can be easy to mix up the article or book from which the citation was taken. 

Referencing the correct page or paragraph, if it is an online source, is also very important. The mistakes in all listed items are mostly accidental, but they can lead to plagiarism. Therefore, you have to make efforts to avoid them. 

Paraphrase Properly

The citations are the best way to avoid plagiarism, but academic writers know well that there is a limit for direct quotations in the papers. Hence, you cannot cite everything directly and have to paraphrase. Providing ideas from other sources is a useful approach, but it is quite tricky as well.

At first, you still need to provide reference to the original source and do it properly. The second is a balance between correct representation of the ideas and do it not with changing just a few words in the sentence. The last-mentioned option is cheap, and it cannot lead to a high evaluation of your essay.

If you have some problems with paraphrasing, you can use professional academic writing services like CustomWritings. You can order a personalized paper written from scratch to see how paraphrasing can be used, and after that, write your own essays with this example. 

Control Your Time

We believe that the majority of college and university students face plagiarism not because of their intentions but due to occasional mistakes. Control under your time will be very helpful to avoid such mistakes and plagiarism in general.

When you are working on paper with enough time ahead, you will not be in a hurry and avoid citing or paraphrasing mistakes. In contrast, when you are in a hurry, you can make many mistakes not only in referencing but generally in the text, which will decrease your grade.

What is more, when you don’t have enough time, there can appear temptation to plagiarize at least part of the essay to provide it in time. Time management helps you to avoid such situations.

Be Attentive

Even when you have enough time, some things can grab your attention. You can be tired, or these can be other reasons that lead to mistakes in your paper, particularly in referencing. Proofread your paper and check the details if you have any doubts.

It doesn’t take much time to look from which source the citation was taken, and what requirements for the assignment are, and if you put all quotation marks. Get a custom to recheck the citation format and references in your papers, and that will be very beneficial for your grade. 

Manage Your Notes

For research or reviews, you first have to collect the information, and only then start to write an essay. The stage of preparation is very important to get top grades and to avoid plagiarism as well.

 

Put the quotation marks just after you copied the text from the source, and put in-text citation after each part of the quotation. This small assistance for yourself will be very helpful later when you start to work with all the data you have collected.,

Include Several Sources in Your Research

Yes, we mentioned several times that you could mix up the sources of the citations and have trouble due to that. But using only one source can also lead to plagiarism, especially in large papers. One or two sources cannot be enough for the length of the paper.

That leads to the case when you are forced to have too many direct citations and generally the data from the sources. When you have several sources, you can combine data from them and base your own ideas and conclusions. Hence, you can give more of your own text and fewer citations and paraphrases from sources you use.

Use Plagiarism Checker

You can use a plagiarism checker yourself to see if it highlights something as plagiarism in your papers. You don’t have to become a customer and buy the program, and there are many companies that provide a service of free plagiarism-checking. You even don’t have to install anything because a company often represents the plagiarism-checker as a particular website or one of the services on the main site.

It doesn’t matter if you are a native English speaker, or a foreign student in the UK, USA, or any other country. You can find plagiarism-checkers in any language and see how original your paper is. Such a check will help you to manage the quality of your paper and avoid plagiarism. 

Therefore, you can see hints, using which you can become an expert in avoiding plagiarism and professional in academic writing.

Pay attention to the details of the citation style required for your paper. Manage your notes to not make a mistake in referencing. Be attentive generally, take your time and use plagiarism-checkers to be fully sure that you will not have any problems with your academic assignments.