Advice for Students: Don't Plagiarize and Cite Your Sources!
Submitting of materials and information that is not of their own by students is a serious offense. This can get them suspended or even expelled from their academic institutions. While example research solutions may appear as an easy and quick fix for their academic credit, it is a form of academic theft and can be considered dishonest. In addition, it may ruin their career as credible student writers due to the lack of originality in their academic papers.
However, students can be prevented from this tempting situation through several ways. They should be encouraged to do careful paraphrasing in their notes and acknowledge their sources explicitly during the paraphrasing. Writing the information and ideas in their own words greatly helps in making sure that they have thought about what the whole source contains and have a good reason for including it in their paper.Students should be encouraged to keep a source trail. They should ensure that they keep track of their sources in their notes and also in each of the successive drafts of their essays. They should begin this process early before they write their draft. Even after, they have handed in their essays; they should ensure they keep all of their drafts and research notes. These careful records between their writing and their sources will help the students in avoiding plagiarism.
Students should be instructed to avoid reading their classmates' papers for the purpose of inspiration. If they are in a course that calls for peer review of student drafts, they are going to read their classmates work. If students, in the course of this undertaking, find that they wish to use ideas from peers at some point in their paper, they must learn to credit the classmate in a similar way that they would credit any of the other sources.
Students should be advised on how to plan ahead. Research can at times turn out be a time-consuming activity. They should learn to budget enough time, for careful search of sources in order to take notes and also think on how they can make use of the sources in their essays.
Students should be instructed to avoid cutting and pasting. They should never cut and paste any information from an electronic source directly into their essays. Instead, it is advisable for them to open a separate document on their computer for each of the sources for careful filling of each research. In case of cutting and pasting, the students should ensure the inclusion of the URL and the date they copied the pages. This deters the students from accidental deleting and ensures easy file retrieval.
Students should learn to keep sources in the correct context. Whenever they consult a source, they should make sure they understand the context. They should be careful when considering the context the source appears to be written. For instance, a book from a biased source with a collection of essays might present an issue that lacks adequate complexity for their project.
Students should be informed about the available support services. Various academic development centers have immensely helped students in effective undertaking of their academic works. Unfortunately, not many of the students know of this resource. A quick endorsement should be done.
Students should never save their citations for later. They never quote or even paraphrase from any source without immediate addition of a citation. They should ensure they add citations in their notes, in their drafts, in their revisions and their response papers.
Students should learn to keep their own writing and their sources separate. This not only reduces the plagiarism risk, but also enables students to annotate their sources in different ways that will help them in understanding and using them effectively in their essays.
Finally, students should learn various ways of determining if the information in use is common knowledge. If the information appears to be cited in more than five other sources, then it becomes likely, and it is safe to generate an assumption that it does not call for citation since it is common knowledge.