Preventing Plagiarism

Only YOU can prevent Plagiarism

Taking shortcuts is the number one reason for students, professors, or even professionals to accidentally, or even purposely, plagiarize. The best way to prevent plagiarism in your own work is to focus on the following:

  1. Organization
  2. Documentation 
  3. Using Information Correctly
ORGANIZATION

Organization

Being organized when you are conducting research for a paper is incredibly important. When dealing with multiple sources, it is hard to keep track of each source’s information. Without a system of note-taking, you increase your risk to misrepresenting source information in your paper and committing plagiarism. Being organized is also a way to ensure that your time is spent doing tasks that help you get closer to a polished paper.

Ways to Stay Organized:

1) Create a task list with ‘due dates’ for each item. This will help make sure you have the major steps to completing your paper finished without feeling like you need to rush.

  • Rushing is one of the major causes of plagiarism in papers

2) For each source that you find, create a method to keep all notes and information you gather pertaining to that source together and labeled.

  • However you choose to take notes, make sure that they are labeled with where the ideas came from. This will make citation easy later on.

3) Use outlines, diagrams, or concept maps to find ways that your sources can be tied together. Remember to keep each idea labeled so that the source it came from can be identified when you need it.

  • To make labeling ideas and sources easier in your notes, consider assigning each source a letter or number so that you can easily track back to where ideas came from.

Documentation of your Resources and Citation

Once you have completed your research, it is important to list your sources into a reference page, works cited, or bibliography. Writing as an academic, or even as a professional, means that certain style guidelines must be followed (either due to a requirement from your professor, company policy, or professional field requirements).

Here at Casper College and the University of Wyoming, Students will generally find themselves required to write their papers according to MLA, APA, APSA, or Chicago Styles. Each of these styles have their own rules that writers must follow in order for outside sources to have the proper recognition. Not following the rules for the style that you are writing in can result in plagiarism.

Not only will you need to have a list of your sources for your final paper, but you will need to remember to include in-text citations within your paper. Any time you are using an idea or words from one of your sources, you will need to state clearly where that information came from. Without citation, you are presenting the information as if it were your own, and it will be considered plagiarized.

Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quotation

The three ways to incorporate source material into your paper is to summarize, paraphrase, or quote the information in your source. It is important that you know how to do these things correctly, otherwise, you are still committing plagiarism.

1) Summary – A summary is when you are giving the reader a ‘bird-eye-view’ of the themes or concepts in the original source. Summaries need to be in your own words and also need to citied according to the style you are writing.

2) Paraphrase – When paraphrasing, you are taking an idea that the author wrote and completely re-writing it in your own words. You may not use the same sentence structure as the author did and just change a few words. The concept must be reproduced in entirely your own voice. Paraphrases must be cited according to the style you are writing.

3) Quote – A quotation is taking the exact words the author used and placing them into the context of your paper. Quotes must be surrounded by quotation marks (” “). A quotation that is presented without quotation marks but still cited is still considered plagiarism because you are representing the words as your own rather than the original author’s. Quotations much have an in-text citation to accompany them using the style with which you are writing.

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