Avoiding Plagiarism

Avoiding Plagiarism

Updated on May 7, 2025.

Table of Contents

In recent years, the topic of plagiarism has increasingly come to the fore. Many politicians and other well-known public figures have been in the media spotlight due to suspected plagiarism. For this reason, many students fear 'accidental' plagiarism, whether in term papers, presentations, or bachelor's and master's theses. Plagiarism very often arises from ignorance rather than intentional. You write your paper, cite all sources, and yet you still have a bad feeling about whether everything is actually cited and supported by sources. With every paragraph without references, you wonder whether those are really your own thoughts, or whether you read or heard them somewhere and therefore included them in your paper. The question often arises: how can you test for yourself whether the various sentences already appear in another text? Should you type each sentence into Google, or should you buy plagiarism software and have it check the text?

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism occurs when, for example, passages of text, entire paragraphs, or ideas from another author are used and presented as one's own, meaning the source isn't properly cited. Plagiarism constitutes a copyright violation and is therefore punishable. To avoid such a crime, you should cite a source for everything that results from someone else's ideas. At the end of your term paper or thesis, you will then certify under oath that the work is your own.

Forms of Plagiarism

There are different forms of plagiarism.

  • Complete plagiarism is the most obvious form of plagiarism. Complete plagiarism occurs when you copy someone else's work in its entirety, or when you have someone else write your work but claim it as your own. So-called ghostwriters regularly offer to write students' term papers or theses.
  • Translation plagiarism : Even if you translate foreign-language texts and use them in your work, you must cite the source. Failure to do so constitutes translation plagiarism.
  • Plagiarism is the practice of taking an idea and then writing it down in your own words without acknowledging the source.
  • In structural plagiarism, the entire structure of a scientific paper is adopted (the entire structure from the cover page to the bibliography).
  • and in copy-and-paste plagiarism, entire paragraphs from another source are incorporated into one's own work without citing the source.

 

You can find out more about the different types of plagiarism here.

Avoid Plagiarism

In general, you should cite all passages of text that aren't your own ideas and err on the side of caution. Then you'll be on the safe side.

University documents that address academic writing can provide initial guidance. These explain correct citation techniques and offer many other helpful tips for writing an academic paper. Each department often has a preferred citation style. If this isn't the case, you can choose a citation style you're comfortable with and apply it throughout the entire document. Before doing this, however, you should definitely consult with your professor or lecturer to avoid penalties.

How do you cite correctly?

In general, one can distinguish between direct and indirect quotations:

  • With a direct quote, you take an entire sentence word for word from a source. This shouldn't be done too often and should be limited to sentences that are particularly relevant or apt and couldn't be expressed better by you. If you want to use a direct quote, you must enclose it in quotation marks. The source information, including the page number where the quote can be found, should then be placed after the quote. After the direct quote, you should continue writing in your normal style.
  • In an indirect quotation, on the other hand, you paraphrase the thoughts or content of another person or their work in your own words. Here, too, you should, of course, be sure to cite the source.

In general, it's important to clearly distinguish your own ideas from those of others so that your reader—usually your professor or lecturer—can clearly see what's your own work and what's someone else's. It's important that you cite the text consistently and don't stray from it.

More Tips

Whenever you take something from a source, place the source after the relevant sentence. It doesn't have to be perfectly formatted; it can be a link, a keyword, an author's abbreviation, etc. The point is simply that you know where the information came from. You can always delete it later.

We also recommend entering all information in the bibliography from the beginning and adding to it as your work progresses. It's important to keep alphabetical order in mind. This will save you the trouble of searching for and categorizing all the sources later on and, above all, will help you keep track of them later.

Google Scholar also offers the option of copying the references in your chosen citation style. To do this, enter the title of your source into Google Scholar and select one of the displayed references. Please always double-check that everything is correct; even Google sometimes misses information and the sources are incomplete.

Check work for Plagiarism

If you'd like to check your work for plagiarism at the end, you can find most plagiarisms using Google Search and Google Scholar. However, there are also various programs you can install on your computer or online services that you can use to check your work for plagiarism.

Universities also often offer services for students. Here, you can submit your work for proofreading. They'll not only correct any typos and spelling errors, but usually also check your work for plagiarism. Sometimes this service is offered free of charge. If it isn't, a small fee is usually charged.

Use ChatGPT to your advantage

ChatGPT might have turned you a little lazy and complacent, but there are ways to use this AI tool to enhance the quality of your work and - importantly - save time by automating repetitive tasks.

Plagiarism checks are one example. When writing a thesis or term paper, it can be difficult to keep track of your entire list of sources. Or, you may miss a couple in one of the many iterations preceeding the final version. This is where ChatGPT serves as a lifesaver.

If you're not sure about the source of a particular figure or statistic, simply ask ChatGPT if they can help you locate it on the internet! You can do this for an entire list of sources and even fact-check information you are not a 100% sure about. That said, ChatGPT's parsing power is restricted to publicly accessible information of the internet so there definitely are limitations.

 

Do you also take exams in addition to term papers? Then check out Studydrive. Here you'll find tons of free study materials, worksheets, solutions to past exams, and you can exchange ideas with other students.

Go to Studydrive