Avoiding plagiarism

Plagiarism is using someone else's words, ideas, results or work without proper credit. It is one of the three main forms of research misconduct, and it can end a research career. Most student plagiarism is not deliberate: it comes from poor notes and rushing.

Forms of plagiarism

• Copying words without quotation marks, even with a citation.
• Patchwriting: copying a passage and changing a few words here and there. Even with a citation, this is not acceptable: the sentence structure is still theirs.
• Using ideas without citing, even in your own words.
• Self-plagiarism: reusing large parts of your own published work without saying so.
• Code and figures: copying code, figures or tables without credit, or against their licence.

Paraphrasing properly

1. Read the passage until you understand it.
2. Close the source.
3. Write the idea from memory, in your own words and structure.
4. Compare with the original: make sure you did not copy phrases, and did not change the meaning.
5. Cite the source.

ExampleOriginal: "Models trained on data from one hospital often perform worse when tested on data from other hospitals." Patchwriting (not OK): "Models trained on data from a single hospital frequently do worse when tested on other hospitals' data." Proper paraphrase: "A model's accuracy can fall when it moves to a new hospital, because each hospital's images differ in ways the model learns to rely on (Zech et al., 2018)."

Tools

Many universities check work with similarity software such as Turnitin or iThenticate. A similarity score is not a plagiarism verdict: properly quoted and cited text also matches. But do not try to "beat" the software by rewording copied text. Write it yourself from the start.

RememberKeep quotes in quotation marks in your notes from day one. Most accidental plagiarism starts with notes that mix your words and theirs.