Editing Tip: Avoiding Plagiarism

Editing Tip Avoiding Plagiarism

It is clear that both widely and less commonly recognized types of plagiarism are significant problems in academic publishing. How can researchers avoid plagiarism to increase their manuscripts’ likelihood of being published?

Try following these steps:

• STEP 1: Before writing, as you review the literature, keep careful records of your sources. Citation software, such as Zotero, ReadCube, or EndNote, can be helpful at this stage. 
• STEP 2: While writing, try not to directly refer to your sources to avoid inadvertent copying, use multiple sources to ensure a diversity of content, and err on the side of caution (citation). See below for more information about when to cite a source.
• STEP 3: After writing, review your manuscript and reference list to ensure that all of the appropriate source citations were included. Additionally, consider checking your manuscript for inadvertent plagiarism using Turnitin, iThenticate, eTBLAST, or other detection tools.