Universities are strict on plagiarism issues and Mr Kumar was caught on plagiarism at one of the premier universities of India. He was given an “F” grade and his scholarship grant was discontinued with immediate effect.

Rachel is a fourth year student at Canadian University, at the last leg of her degree. An offender of intellectual theft she is suffering from some dire consequences. The university has sent her a letter stating that they recognise that she has committed the offense of plagiarism and it has gone on her records in the university.

Plagiarism is surely an expense that is expellable in most of the countries. And even if the university decides to not expel you, if it goes down in your transcript, everyone would know about and everywhere that you apply for job, it would be known to them through your university record. It builds up a question mark on your credibility throughout your career.

If we try and understand the depth of plagiarised content and its actions taken by various universities, it would be seen that most of the universities follow a process. They may not straight away issue a registered letter. They schedule a series of hearings to investigate the allegations on the scholar before getting conclusive about what happened. The degree of plagiarism or theft committed is the main parameter that decides the kind of reaction that would be taken by the committee investigating the matter. If the entire dissertation is copied, expelling is the most expected outcome. However, if the theft relates to imitation of small portions in research, it may lead to severe but not career impacting convictions.

There isn’t another academic offense as serious as plagiarism that can be committed at college level and the American universities are no different.

Kathy was expelled from a leading American university because she copied her research data from another source. “I checked the handbook of the university in detail to get information about plagiarism offenses. They had a much defined process related to any kind of offense that was related to academic integrity. The degree of the offense varied the conviction, ranging from failure in assignment, failure in class, suspension or expulsion. Each one more severe than the other. There was no way that they would reverse the judgement they took on my action. So I decided to move on and looked for another university (of lesser repute) that was willing to accept my credits and allow me to work further. But suggest to all scholars that let your work and submission get delayed but look for no shortcuts by means of plagiarism”

So, if you have ever looked for an easy way out and copying content seems like a good option, just think one more time.

Plagiarism Removal provides its customers the means to submit Word documents (*.DOC, *DOCX, and *.RTF) and check its similarity index. The similarity index is the percentage of the document content that contains plagiarized (or copied) material. For example, if the similarity index is 50%, it means that 50% of the word count in the submitted document has been plagiarized. A similarity index of 15% (or less) is good, as every research document uses industry-specific terms and jargons that cannot be replaced.

Customers can specify their personal details and word count in the following fields, before requesting for a plagiarism check.

If you do not have a plagiarism report, click the “No” option, on which the form prompts you check for plagiarism. If you already have a plagiarism report, click the “Yes” option, and upload both the existing plagiarism report and the Word file attachment.

Click the Generate Plagiarism Report check box to request for plagiarism check and a TurnItIn report.

Use the Upload Thesis Document field to attach the Word document to be checked. Only files with extension (doc, docx, and rtf) can be attached. You can attach up to 10 documents, with each file not exceeding a file size of 25MB.

Use the Targeted Match % field to select the targeted match percentage (15 or 20%).

The Percentage of Plagiarism field displays the similarity index of the attached document.

Based on the value of the submitted word count, the targeted match percentage, and the plagiarism percentage, the form displays the total number of words that need to rewritten, based on the calculations provided in the following table:

Example, if the attached thesis contains 30,000 words and has a plagiarism percentage of 35%, 50% of the document (or 15000 words) will be replaced or rewritten, to reduce the similarity index to 15% or less.

• First and foremost, you need to have a thorough understanding of what we mean when we talk about Plagiarism. Plagiarism in very simple words is an act of fraud, in which one steals someone else’s original work and claims it as their own. There are various kinds of plagiarisms such as

1. Direct Plagiarism: Using someone else’s ideas without giving proper credit or citation.
2. Accidental Plagiarism: Unintentional failure to cite sources, not realizing that work is paraphrased or forgetting to cite for the same.
3. Mosaic Plagiarism: Adding someone else’s work to your write up without using quotation marks or stealing their original ideas and simply using your own text for them.
4. Self-Plagiarism: Taking excerpts from your own previous work and adding them to your current paper without using citations.

Hence, one needs to be extremely careful to add relevant citations so they can successfully avoid plagiarism in their work.

• Use multiple sources: It has been observed that a researcher is much more prone to copy exact ideas and sentences if he or she uses lesser number and similar kind of sources.It is therefore always better to use a large number of sources of different kinds for your work so that in an attempt to blend them all together, you make use of your own creativity and language.

• Create a rough draft or an outline: This is one tip you will repeatedly get. However nobody states the relevance attached to it. Creating a rough outline or a draft of your research paper beforehand will enable you to use more of your thoughts and language into the same. It will not only give structure to your paper, but it will help you strengthen your own ideas with the help of other researchers’ works.

Use Citations: While using excerpts from other people’s work, in the Harvarrd Referencing system, you must use the following Citation format such that they do not cause plagiarism in your work.

• Standard reference format:

1. For a book : Author(s) family name, Initial(s) Year of publication, Title, Publisher, Place of publication.
2. For a website: Author / the person or organization responsible for the site, Site date (the year the site was created or last revised), Name of the sponsor of the source, URL, Date of viewing the source
3. For a Journal Article: Author(s) family name, Initial(s) Year of publication, Article Title, Journal Title, Edition, Pages

• Know where to avoid citations: A research paper that has only citations from everywhere will simply look like a terrible mishmash of ideas, findings and observations.   You need to know the cases where you must not provide any reference or citation for what you write. These are cases of ‘Common Knowledge’

                          Common knowledge is typically of two kinds:

1. General Common Knowledge: This includes facts and figures that lie in public domain such as dates of events in history, famous people and their birth and death, historical facts etc. This is information that need not be cited for since it is already common to all.
2. Field Specific Common Knowledge: This is a more specific kind of knowledge, which is however common to people belonging to a particular field. You need not provide any citation for such knowledge.For instance a research paper on quantum physics will not need any reference for the age old formula
   “E = MC^{2 “}

• Paraphrasing: A lot of researchers have the habit of copying ideas from fellow researchers’ works and then putting it into their own words, which is fine as long as you give necessary credit to the original researcher for his or her own ideas. This practice is called paraphrasing which also amounts to plagiarized content. You must therefore ensure that if you use original ideas of another researcher, even if you do not directly quote his lines, you must insert the required citation for the same.

• Don’t save citation work for the end: This is one tip that goes without saying. If you leave your citation work for the end, then there are chances you wouldn’t be able to complete them in entirety. You might leave out on a few pieces of information here and there which remain uncited and later become the plagiarized content of your work.

• Start early: You must allot ample amount of time from your schedule to a research paper. The reason is that it might look easy and quick at face value, but the entire process of generating original ideas and combining them with previous research, while taking care of jargon, language, technicalities and citations can take a lot of time. Being in a rush to complete your paper will lead you to copying previous works and forgetting to add necessary citations.

• Use original ideas: Lastly, a research paper without any value, ideas or fresh content by the writer or researcher is not really of any noteworthiness. You need to establish the fact that your research paper should represent your ideas and your perspective, which must be strengthened by other scholars’ research.

Plagiarism could be defined as a situation where you present the words or ideas of someone else as your own and on top of it, you don’t even acknowledge the source.

You are committing a theft called plagiarism by not crediting the author.

While working on a research paper, you will find loads of supporting material for your paper from others’ works. Hence, you need to credit them if you are using others’ ideas.

While quoting people or while summarising or paraphrasing information found in different books, articles, or Web pages, you should always acknowledge the original author.

Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism:

Always use your own ideas. It should always be your paper and your ideas on which your focus should be

Give complete citation information for each item you are using when taking notes

Try to make a limited use of the ideas of others and it should be taken only to support or reinforce your own argument

Use quotation marks when you are directly stating another person’s words

It is always a good strategy to take out a few minutes and write a short draft of your paper without making use of anybody’s notes. This will enhance your thinking power which would eventually help you in being too dependent upon your sources.

Hence following are the points which you should always avoid to check plagiarism in your reports…

1. Buying or using a term paper written by someone else

2. Cutting and pasting passages from the web, a book, or an article and then inserting them into your paper without citing them. Keep it in mind that now you can easily search passages copied from web.

3. Using other people’s ideas or words without citing them

4. Paraphrasing other person’s words without giving him his due credit

Originality is an essential factor for success in any assignment involving writing skills. The biggest threat to the reputation of the writer is plagiarism. Plagiarism of any form can have serious personal, professional, ethical and legal consequences. There are many softwares available which can detect plagiarism and it is considered as a criminal offense which is punishable. There are many ways to check your content for plagiarism, here are some ways to check the originality of your content.

Online free tools

There are very effective online tools available which check your content, phrase by phrase, in google and score your uniqueness. These free tools have a word limit for every search you do. But there results are quite reliable. Some tools restrict the free monthly usage. Small SEO tools and WorldEssays are two such service providers.

Online paid tools.

There are many paid tools available which also do the same task, but their search is more intensive and overs a larger number of websites. You can buy the monthly membership or signup for a year. These are good for professional who have to constantly produce unique material. Grammarly and Unplag are such service providers.

Hire a plagiarism checking consultant

There are consultants who do a thorough check of the content using reliable softwares, these service providers not only check your document for the uniqueness but also remove any plagiarised statement in your document. They also suggest citation styles which will further protect you from getting trapped in any form of plagiarism.

The above methods do not require much time or money, but they guarantee a plagiarism free content which will save you from a lot of hassles in the future. Thus, you should make use of the technology and services available and produce original content and safeguard your reputation.

Plagiarism is one of the gravest offenses that should be avoided when producing a dissertation. It is perceived as the use of any person’s work and published as your own. The concept is recognized as conning that plays the focal point of taking scholarly advantage from the work of the past. To be precise, the idea of plagiarism repudiates the authenticity of your work and damages the essence of the subject matter that you want to pay focus upon.

Plagiarism is noted to be one of the serious issues that interfere with the originality of a student’s work. There is no reason why it should be leveraged since it marks the serious offense of stealing or extorting. Colleges and universities strictly revolt against plagiarism and do not endorse the concept. There are institutions where plagiarism is banned or boycotted.

If you consider the consequences of this offensive method, you will realize the drastic outcomes of manipulating the novelty of a work through ejection of the student from the university. As a result, the student being rusticated will not have the eligibility to get admission elsewhere and complete his/her degree. Remember, the results of plagiarism are negatively impactful, communicative and no one can stay insusceptible. Nothing can actually spare you from the consequences of plagiarism.

You may have several reasons, such as, lack of awareness or position that won’t approve your misdoing. In no way can you escape the legitimate and moral repercussions of plagiarism. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that you re-check your work and put in the endeavour of re-writing your task. To avoid plagiarism, you have to ensure what constitutes the problem and how to evade it.

Enquire about any missing attribution. Check your content on an online plagiarism checker, which will define the authenticity of your work. The software is particularly designed to check through any errors in your write-up. Make sure that your research is a fine piece of uniqueness and your own creation. Nevertheless, your efforts will contribute to the endeavour of your task.

Academic writing is done in such a way that there is a lack of overt opinions and a presence of an objective tone. Also, there is a journalistic slant to the way the language in academic writing is presented. Here is how you should maintain an objective style in your thesis or dissertation.

Evaluate your work for bias

You may want to get access to credible or reliable sources while writing your research paper. You should evaluate each and every source that you refer to for bias. When you stick with scholarly journals and publications, you could easily avoid bias in your work. Another way to get access to objective data is by referring to sites that have “.org”, “.edu” or “.gov” domain extensions. Some sources to which you refer would never be free of bias. You should, therefore, carefully take a look at the information and select your research materials accordingly.

Use objective language

You should present your work in such a way that your readers can easily draw conclusions from it. Avoid using the language such that it would not be understood as a value judgment such as “amazing” or “awesome.” Also, avoid emotional phrasing and adverbs or adjectives that exaggerate. For instance, do not use “very” or “really” to place an emphasis on those sentences that need to be highlighted.

Express your thoughts explicitly

When you express your thoughts explicitly, you can achieve an objective piece of research work. The more specific you are in the way you express yourself, the more powerful your writing would be. For instance, instead of writing “the entire world,” write “76% of the world’s population.” Be very specific in what you write. When you follow these tips, you could easily write a piece that is not only objective in nature, but also bias free.