4 steps in preventing plagiarism
According to Oxford University, to plagiarize is to represent someone else’s work as your own, whether consciously or unconsciously.
This can be done by plagiarizing or paraphrasing someone else’s published or unpublished work without giving due credit or by passing off another person’s artistic or technical effort as your own.
Keenious is here to help you quickly analyse, research, and reference within your document. But as a student it may be easy to slip into the ‘copy and paste’ rabbit hole. You have numerous deadlines that are piling up and thus, you fall victim to plagiarism.
Here at Keenious, we want to help you achieve your very best with this 4-step guide in preventing plagiarism altogether.
1. Don’t just copy and paste — Be original, put it into your own words.
As we have already stated, the ‘copy and paste’ rabbit hole is a major danger zone. Nobody likes a copycat, so why should your academic essay be one? Read thoroughly through your possible references and give it your own original twist. Remember, synonyms are your best friend and so is Keenious. Keenious is a learning tool so use it to your advantage and gain important and useful knowledge about your subject area for your essay.
2. Use as many sources we have provided as possible.
Your university library resources and course notes are at your disposal, so make sure to take full advantage of them. There are also other ways in which you can gain reliable information which includes researching on the internet or using Keenious. If there was ever a time to be greedy, it would be for your academic essay. Our main advice is to learn from the resources — read thoroughly and highlight the key phrases that have stood out to you. Using various sources shows your marker that you have taken the time to carefully read and assess every reference you have been presented with. It also shows that you are capable of presenting your own thoughts and views on the topic based on your studies. Remember; knowledge is power.
3. The trusty quotation marks
We know that Keenious has provided you with all these extremely helpful resources and references, but as we have stated before ‘copy & paste’ is not going to cut it in the plagiarism world. Sometimes there is no way to rephrase a sentence, especially when it is a well-known quote. If you want to quote directly from a text, then the text must be bound by quotation marks. Make sure not to take long abstracts from the text and also comment on the quote with your own thoughts and views on the subject.
4. Bibliography
This point may seem like an obvious one, but some students may forget — always document your information in the bibliography at the end of your essay. How will the marker know where you got all this brilliant information if you don’t show them? Thanks to Keenious, we have provided you with quick, easy information, and quick access to cite your references in seconds. You need to show the marker that you have cited your references correctly, this limits your level of plagiarism and shows a well researched essay.
So there you have it, our campaign to vanquish plagiarism, however hard it may be. Plagiarism is one of the main reasons why students may perform poorly on an academic essay, they become lazy and they don’t realise that they are being entirely unoriginal with their writing. It is very easy to get a plagiarism percentage on your academic essay due to students being careless in their research journey, but by following this 4-step guide it can help decrease the risk of falling victim to this copy-cat status. Be original, apply synonyms, and use Keenious! Happy researching.
