Prevention and Detection of Plagiarism

Simply altering the text of an original source is not avoiding plagiarism, if the original idea is kept without citation, then this is grounds for plagiarism.

It is important to consider that in many instances, affenders of plagiarism are often unaware that they have even committed plagiarism.

Here we will provide a quick overview with further reading into the Awareness and Attitudes towards plagiarism, including:

How as an aurthor or student, you can prevent committing plagiarism, and
How as a teacher or lecturer, you can detect plagiarism

As an aurthor, you can prevent plagiarism by understanding these guidelines

• when an individual copies word-for-word directly from another source
• when an individual openly commits literary theft
• when pictures or diagrams are used without citing the origin
• when the words are very closely paraphrased from someone else text, this includes using a phrase or sentence taken from another source
• when statistics or surveys from another source are used without acknowledging the source
• When an individual uses text obtained from a website
• when a student copies notes from another student, this includes research and term papers.
• when a student buys a term paper from a third party website and hands it in as their own work
  

As an lecturer, you can prevent plagiarism by understanding

• why students commit plagiarism, full analysis can be seen at CDTLink
• how you can detect plagiarism using programs such as turnitin.com

The above is a quick guide, further discussion on preventing plagiarism can be seen at the following websites:

Virtual Salt - Anti Plagiarism Strategies

Turnitin - Preventing Plagiarism Wikipedia - Detecting