According to reports on academic integrity violations, cases of cheating among college students remain frequent. Thus, 82% of educators surveyed by PlagiarismCheck this year admitted their students cheat one way or another when doing their writing assignments.
Why do college students plagiarize?
Academic overload and pressure to succeed are among the top reasons. Poor time management, lack of knowledge, and ordinary laziness are also to blame.
However, not all students plagiarize because they want to cheat. Many do that unintentionally because they lack knowledge of paraphrasing and proper citation. They use an AI plagiarism checker to polish their writing and ensure their drafts are original, but understanding plagiarism and ways to avoid it in academic papers would also come in handy: It would help students save time and minimize cases of unintentional plagiarism in their works.
What Is Unintentional Plagiarism?
Unintentional, aka accidental, plagiarism refers to improper paraphrasing, quoting, or citing sources in college papers. It happens when students don’t mean cheating but lack understanding of the citation rules or which ideas require attribution.
As opposed to unintentional plagiarism, other types aren’t so innocent:
- Direct plagiarism: When a student copies text from a source without quoting.
- Mosaic plagiarism: When a student paraphrases from multiple sources without attribution.
- Self-plagiarism: Students reuse their work for other classes or texts without citation.
Whatever the type, college students should avoid plagiarism to maintain academic integrity. Below are strategies for doing that.
7 Strategies to Avoid Plagiarism in College Papers
Numerous online resources share tips on avoiding plagiarism in papers, but first, it’s critical to understand that plagiarism isn’t the entirety of academic integrity. It’s a subset of integrity and just one way to violate it.
Academic integrity combines six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage. Avoiding plagiarism, even unintentionally, in college papers refers to these values and allows students to embody them.
Here are strategies that can help:
- Develop good note-taking habits.
Students should be able to distinguish between their ideas and those they take from sources. It would help if they wrote down all details (author, title, page number, publication date) to see which information requires citation. They can also mark direct quotes in their notes so as not to mistake them for their own.
- Learn academic citation practices.
Academic writing only exists with citation styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) and strict rules for structuring and formatting college papers according to them. Students should know and follow citation styles, including references for each source they use while writing.
Corresponding tools like Zotero or EndNote can help manage citations and correctly organize them throughout a paper.
- Understand the principle of paraphrasing.
Even when paraphrasing, students should credit the original author. Proper paraphrasing involves comprehending the source and rewriting its content with a student’s own vocabulary and sentence structure.
In plain English, communicate the original meaning as you understand it.
- Use direct quotes when necessary.
Students should learn to integrate exact wording in their texts smoothly. It would help to quote only when it’s essential to the point and fits into the argument a student attempts to prove. It’s also a must to follow the quotation with an appropriate citation.
- Use plagiarism detection tools.
College students should make it a habit to check their essays, theses, and research papers for plagiarism and AI text patterns before submitting them for review. It can be a university-provided plagiarism checker or any other like Grammarly or PlagiarismCheck.org: These tools will analyze a text and provide a report suggesting necessary corrections.
- Follow the institution’s guidelines.
Each college and university has policies on plagiarism, and learning them can help students avoid unintentional cheating on papers. When in doubt, they can seek help from professors, writing centers, or librarians. Specialists will assist with proper paraphrasing or citations.
- Review and revise texts before submitting.
A good practice is double-checking citations to ensure that all quotes, paraphrases, and references are in their proper places. Reading aloud can help students catch inconsistencies or missing citations and revise accordingly.
That’s it!
These strategies, combined with a strong understanding of academic integrity, can help college students avoid unintentional plagiarism and maintain the originality of their work.
