A Workshop on

Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

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 A Workshop on
Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

A Workshop on
Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Deanship of Scientific Research

Dr. Ismael Bezzina

[email protected]

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 A Workshop on
Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Fabrication )‫(االختالق‬

Falsification )‫(التزييف‬

Plagiarism )‫(االستالل‬

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 A Workshop on
Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Outline

WHAT IS PLAGIARISM?

TYPES OF PLAGIARISM

HOW TO AVOID PLAGIARISM?

THE iThenticate SOFTWARE

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

What is Plagiarism
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to “plagiarize” means

• to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

• In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone

else’s work and lying about it afterward.

http://www.plagiarism.org/plag_article_what_is_plagiarism.html

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All of the following are considered plagiarism:

• copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit

• failing to put a quotation in quotation marks

• giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation

• changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit

• copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your
work, whether you give credit or not

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High-Profile People May Have Their Degrees Revoked

These notable figures saw their degrees stripped for plagiarism. Universities can revoke
degrees if they discover cheating or other irregularities.

1- In April 2012, Pál Schmitt resigned as president of Hungary a week after his doctorate was
withdrawn by Semmelweis University in Budapest. According to a BBC report, Semmelweis a
cused Schmitt, a two-time Olympic fencing gold medalist, of plagiarizing entire passages of his
doctoral thesis (1992). There was at least partial copying on nearly 200 pages of Schmitt’s 215
page thesis, according to a Semmelweis committee.

2: Although Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the former German defense minister, seemed to be

heir-apparent to Chancellor Angela Merkel, he resigned on March 1, 2011 after admitting to
plagiarizing parts of his legal doctorate (2007). Universität Bayreuth revoked his degree, citing
“serious errors” in his paper.

By Menachem Wecker May 2, 2012 RSS Feed Print

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Types of Plagiarism
The First Type of plagiarism
• Plagiarism of Words
• The use of another’s exact words without citing the author

• Incorrect
• Plagiarism is the reproduction of someone else’s words, ideas or findings and presenting
them as one’s own without proper acknowledgement. ( no quotes- no ref.)

• Correct
• Plagiarism is the “reproduction of someone else’s words, ideas or findings and presenting
them as one’s own without proper acknowledgement” (Undergraduate Course Handbook:
2008, p.24)

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

The Second Type of plagiarism

ƈ Plagiarism of Structure

• Paraphrasing another’s words by changing sentence construction or word choice with

citation

• Paraphrasing while maintaining original sentence construction with citation

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The Third Type of plagiarism

Plagiarism of Ideas

Presenting another’s
ideas as your own
without giving the
person credit

Submitting a paper
without citing or
incorrectly citing
another’s ideas

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

The Fourth Type of plagiarism

ƈ Plagiarism of Self

• The use of previous work for another work.

• Although these were you original words and thoughts, receiving credit for a previous
work is considered cheating

Source www.centralia.edu/academics/writingcenter/

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The Penalties of Plagiarism

▷ Although plagiarism can be intentional or unintentional, both have consequences.

Penalties may include:

Paper rejection – Proposal refusal – Suspension from research – Contract termination –
Legal charges

Students are subject to:

▷ Receiving zero on the assignment
▷ Failing the course
▷ Suspension
▷ Expulsion

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Avoiding Plagiarism...

To avoid Plagiarizing:
Cite all Sources used

Use of Quotations

Appropriate Paraphrasing

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

What is Citation?

A “citation” is the way you tell your readers that certain material in your work
came from another source. It also gives your readers the information necessary
to find that source again, including:

• information about the author

• the title of the work

• the name and location of the company that published your copy of the source

• the date your copy was published

• the page numbers of the material you are borrowing

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What do I need to cite?

You should always provide references for

Direct quotations

Paraphrases

Statistics

Charts, graphs, diagrams

Results of others’ research

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Quotations
• Remember that Direct Quotes are when you use an author’s exact words or phrases.

Ȥ Direct Quotes must be enclosed in double quotation marks.

Ȥ A citation for the direct quote should be put in parenthesis, directly after the direct
quote, using APA* (American Psychological Association )format.

*Purdue University Online Writing Lab - APA Style Details

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Direct Quote Example in APA Format

Original text:
Students frequently overuse direct quotations in taking notes, and as a result
they overuse quotations in the final research paper. Probably only 10% of your
final paper should appear as directly quoted material.

Direct Quote:
When writing a research paper, no more than “10% of your final paper
should appear as directly quoted material” (Lester, 2010, pp. 117-118).
References
Lester, James D. (2010). Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide, 13th
edition. New York: Longman

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Direct Quote Usage Rules

• Use direct quotes moderately.

Ȥ If you use too many direct quotes, your sources are actually writing your assignment
for you.

• Limit direct quote use to times when:

Ȥ The author’s word choices are important to keep, and changing them could cause a
loss in meaning.

Ȥ You cannot say something differently than the author.

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Remark
The act of quoting material without including the indicia of a
quotation is sufficient to convict someone of plagiarism. It is no
defense for the plagiarist to say:

“I forgot.“
or
“It is only a rough draft.”
or
“I did not know it was plagiarism.”
or
“It is from one of my articles.“
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Paraphrasing
• The preferred method of avoiding plagiarism when incorporating
source material is through the use of paraphrases.

A paraphrase is a restatement of someone else’s ideas, evidence or

opinions using your own words.

Although this helps you to avoid direct plagiarism, you still have to
attribute the ideas to the original proposer.

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Paraphrasing
• In order to paraphrase a passage from a source, you have to
understand it very well. You have to know what all the words mean,
at least in that particular context.

• So by correctly paraphrasing your source material, with few direct

quotes, you demonstrate to your reader, that you really understand
the topic.

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Paraphrasing is a valuable skill, because it:

• Is better than quoting an average passage.

• Controls the temptation to quote too much.

• Proves to the reader that you know what you are talking about.

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Preventing Plagiarism: Resources for Educators

• Intentional Plagiarism

• Unintentional Plagiarism

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Guidelines for Plagiarism Prevention among Students

• Explain what “plagiarism” means

• Explain what’s Wrong about Plagiarism

• Make the Consequences Clear

• Assign Oral Presentations

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Professional plagiarism prevention

iThenticate checks written work for duplicate content against the
world’s largest comparison database, providing in-depth reports in
minutes. Ensure work is original before publication.

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

The Ithenticate Software ( http://www.ithenticate.com(

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What are the main benefits of iThenticate?

• Authors can ensure they have sufficiently cited their sources and presented
the highest quality written work.

• Allow editors to view and move submitted documents through the peer-
review or referee process to publication, confident that content is original.

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Some Figures On Ithenticate

25 Million Documents Checked for Plagiarism compared to the following database items:

37,000,000
Scholarly articles, books, and conferences proceedings from
nearly 80,000 scientific, technical, and medical journals

92,000,000
Published works from journals, periodicals, magazines,
encyclopedias.

43,000,000,000
Current and archived web pages

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

The iThenticate Account Homepage

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Login
First time users will receive an email with a username and a one time password. You may only
.log in once with the one-time password and you will need to change it the first time you log in

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Password Reset

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 A Workshop on
Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Creating a New Folder or a New Folder Group

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 A Workshop on
Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Creating a New Folder Group

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 A Workshop on
Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Creating a New Folder

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Creating a New Folder

iThenticate currently accepts the following file types for document upload:

• Microsoft Word® (DOC and DOCX)

• Word XML
• Plain Text (TXT)
• Adobe PostScript®
• Portable Document Format (PDF)
• HTML
• Corel WordPerfect® (WPD)
• Rich Text Format (RTF)

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Practical Steps of Ithenticate

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

1-Upload

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

By choosing Upload a File (a single file submission(:

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

By choosing Cut & Paste type submission:

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Similarity Reports are available in two viewing modes:

Text-only

Document Viewer.

Document Viewer (DV) shows the submission in its original format including figures
and tables.
Text-only Report is the default report and through this viewing mode access is gained
to the Document Viewer Report .

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Text-Only Mode

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Document Viewer Mode

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Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Research

Warning
The similarity indices do not reflect iThenticate’s assessment of whether a paper
has or has not been plagiarized.

BUT

Similarity Reports are simply a tool to help you find sources that contain text
similar to the submitted documents. The decision to deem any work plagiarized
must be made carefully, and only after an in depth examination of both the
submitted paper and suspect sources.

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Q
What if two sources have the exact same amount of matching text; which
source would be displayed in the Similarity Report as a best match?

R
if two internet sources were found to match the identical section of text, the
most recently crawled internet source would be displayed as the best match. If
an internet source and a publication source were found to match an identical
section of text, the publication source would be displayed as the top match.

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Differences with the Text-only Report:

Reduction to two viewing modes:

Match Overview (which is similar to the Similarity Report in the Text-only

viewing mode).

All Sources (which is similar to the Content Tracking in the Text-only

viewing mode)

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Classifying Reports

Reports can be generally classified into four categories

1-Low Level Non-Issues

A low-level paper will yield a similarity percentage of 10% or less. The only
similarity found in these papers is in the form of commonly used phrases. The
single sources will yield 1-3% similarity. The report below is an example. This
paper has a 4% overall similarity index which consists of 6 sources all at 1% or
less. These papers are easy to identify and should be deleted immediately after
reviewing

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2. False Alarms

A false alarm paper yields a similarity percentage higher than 30% but
shows no sign of plagiarism in the report. The overall percentage is high
but there are many different sources of similarity which all yield 5% or less.
These papers need a brief review but can be removed shortly thereafter.
The report on the following page is an example. It has an overall similarity
percentage of 36% but the highest single source is only 3%

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3. Hidden Problems

Hidden problems are papers that look acceptable on the surface

but show possible plagiarism upon review of the report. They
generally have a low overall similarity percentage but yield a high
percentage from a single source. The paper below is an
example. The overall percentage is only 14%, but 11% is from one
source and it appears in one chunk of text. These reports should
be reviewed carefully and saved.

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4. High Percentage Problems

High percentage problem papers yield 40% or higher similarity.

These reports are easily. The report below is an example. It yields
66% similarity overall and has two sources with over 25% similarity
in each.

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References
1- http://www.ithenticate.com/index.html

2- Avoiding Plagiarism in scientific research. Deanship of Scientific

Research, King Abdulaziz University, 2012

h t t p : / / w w w. k a u . e d u . s a / c o n t e n t . a s p x ? S i t e _
ID=305&lng=AR&cid=208984&URL=www.kau.edu.sa

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