Plagiarism and Research Papers

A Research Paper is a work of intellectual nature by a scholar. It is therefore expected that the author would honestly acknowledge all the ideas and documents s/he is relying on for the presentation of the principal theme of the Paper, which have been borrowed from the works of others. Presenting others’ ideas or words as one’s is called plagiarism. Hence it is very important that a person writing a Research Paper should check the draft of the paper with a well-read colleague, senior or Mentor. These days, we can take advantage of certain Software available in the market. Dupe Cop, Copy Scape etc. are some examples of this kind of Software. Here, we need to be careful. These machines are as blind as the people who use them.

There is a Statistical chance that the words used by some author in the past in connection with the subject matter discussed in our paper may exactly tally with a sentence or two written by us. There is no need to panic. This can happen due to limited vocabulary available to express the exact idea. It may even happen that our own previous writing on the subject may be cited by the software as pre-existing work and highlighted as duplication. In either case, the problem can be solved by citing the earlier work and giving due credit to the first author. There is also the easier option of rephrasing the sentences, clearly indicating the source of the first work.