Academic Integrity in a Digital Age

3.1.2 Strategies to avoid plagiarism

Plagiarism in the education sector is the weakness that brings challenges to lecturers and students. It is a weakness that replicates itself amongst the academic community, as those who plagiarise are the ones who in the near future do become lecturers, researchers and or consultants (Ahmed & Ullah, 2015; Graham-Matheson & Starr, 2013; Henslee, Goldsmith, Stone, & Krueger, 2015). According to Ahmed and Ullah (2015) to avoid plagiarism one need to know the causes of plagiarism. The causes of plagiarism include impropriate paraphrasing; improper quoting of materials; improper usage of sources; using materials without acknowledging; lack of knowledge about proper citation methods; and using web knowledge as public.

Citing sources:when citing resources make sure you show your text and the borrowed text. As a learned person, it is important to make your work stronger by showing that you are not just copying but adding to previous academic work. Make it clear who said what: make sure you distinguish your ideas from those got from somewhere else (Ahmed & Ullah, 2015).

Know how to paraphrase: a paraphrase is a restatement in your own words of someone else’s ideas. It is not about changing a few words in a sentence from another author, but is the change of both wording and sentence structure of the original sentence without changing content. Paraphrased sentences also require citation as ideas come from other sources (Ahmed & Ullah, 2015).

Analyse and evaluate your sources: not all what is written in the web worth citing. You need to selecttwo works that are related to your topic of study. Other strategies to prevent plagiarism include: it is an understanding of how to reference; knowing the rules about quotations; proper note taking; and proofreading and multiple drafts.Plagiarism is important to be observed as paves ways to connect scholars; to support scholars in developing their own ideas and adding authority to the academicians work.

There are cases some universities do use plagiarism software to level at which one has plagiarised. Most of institutions using this software do have to develop policies that will specify what percentage is allowed. For example, of the Open University of Tanzania Turnitin report at 30% is allowed. This is because in many instances one can find some text being the same. However, in each detected case the student has to be sanctioned to explain.