Ethical writing is the most important in the research and academic world. It guarantees credibility of academic communication, integrity of scientific record and safeguards the reputation of individual scientists and organisations. To become a part of your speciality and play a significant and noble role, you should know the main principles of ethical behaviour. This guide addresses the most critical violations against which you must take proactive measures: plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and data fabrication.
Plagiarism: What it Means and How to Avoid it
The best known type of academic misconduct is plagiarism. Plagiarism is the wrongful act of presenting another person, their ideas, words, or a piece of art of the plagiarizer as their own. This is intellectual snatching and it is a serious dent on your credibility.
The Variations of Plagiarism
- Direct Plagiarism: You wipe down the text and change nothing and fail to use quotation marks or referencing the source.
- Mosaic Plagiarism: You take up phrases and clauses of a source and openly incorporate in your own text without using quotation marks or you reference the source in the wrong way. You do a weak job to paraphrase.
- Paraphrasing Plagiarism: This is a situation where a person presents an idea of another author in his/her own words without referring to the original source. You should never forget your source of an idea, although you may say it in different ways.
Ways to avoid plagiarism
You should strictly give credit to everything borrowed. Give all the sources that you have used in a safety style guide (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago).
- Quote verbatim: Inside quotation marks, put all the text that you copied verbatim and add the page number or location information to your citation. You should limit the direct quotes; whenever possible, you need to have your own voice in expressing ideas.
- Effective paraphrasing: Read the original text and set it aside then write the thought using your own words. Adopt different sentence structure and words. Always insert your paraphrase or your summary with appropriate citation.
- Keep track of your sources: Be very careful in keeping records as you do your research. Arrange the notes and citations with a reference management tool.
Identifying and Preventing Self-Plagiarism
Self-plagiarism is a serious violation of ethics that researchers do not pay much attention to. You engage in self-plagiarism, also known as duplication publication, when you use large volumes of your own earlier published work (text or data) in a new publication without giving it due credit and disclosure. One of the greatest assumptions that readers make is that a work published is fresh and original; when you recycle it, you are deceiving.
Extensive Varieties of Self-Plagiarism
- Redundant Publication: You include or present the identical data/manuscript in two journals.
- Text Recycling: In a current paper, you take large chunks of the introduction, methods or literature review of an older paper and incorporate it into your text, without putting the text in quotation marks or referencing the source of that text.
Action: Writing with Fresh Eyes
You have to make sure your new work brings something new.
- Charge your old stuff the same way as the work of any other person: In case you have to refer to your own earlier work, cite the published article and do it explicitly. In case you need to use a piece of text (such as a methods section) again, place them in quotation marks and reference it. But you must be sparse of this practice; it is frequently forbidden by journal directions.
- Ask permission: When you want to use whole figures or big portions of text, you will have to seek permission with the one who originally has copyright, usually the publisher.
- Write paper stage: Writing each paper to announce a new phase of research. You have to give a complete, complete, and non-redundant account of your present findings.
Guaranteeing Data Integrity: Fabrication and Falsification none
The worst types of research misconduct are manipulations of data fabrication and falsification of data. Their actions are a breach of the main principle of scientific honesty and integrity.
- Data Fabrication: You create information or outcomes and document or tell them as accurate.
- Data Falsification: You alter research materials, equipment or processes, or you alter or omit data or results in such a way that the research is incorrectly represented in the research record.
Action Taken: Commitment to Honesty
You will need to organize your data in a transparent and rigorous manner during the whole research lifecycle.
- Record all information: Have full, detailed records of all raw material, experimental procedures and method of analysis.
- Report all findings: You are required to report on all the relevant results including those that statistically reject your hypotheses. Falsification is in the form of selective reporting.
- Check your work: When you report on your work, always check your transcriptions, calculations, and statistical tests to ensure that there are no inadvertent mistakes.
The Use of Similarity Reports as aiding to standards
Current publishing technology is greatly dependent on technology to identify misconduct. Software is used to generate Similarity Reports which were previously referred to as Plagiarism checks by academic institutions and journals. These reports have a comparison of your submitted manuscript with billions of internet pages, journal articles, and student papers databases.
- Examine the report: You should take your time to go through the Similarity Reports. High percentage is not necessarily a sign of plagiarism, the report matches the mentioned material that is properly referenced (such as reference lists and quoted text).
- Attend to high-match instances: Pay attention to the high-similarity areas in the main body of your text. In case the software identifies the lack of citations or wrongly paraphrased sentences, you have to rewrite them to make them original and correctly cited.
Mars Publications will assist you in understanding your Plagiarism and Similarity Reports. Your manuscript will be free of any ethical issues to submit. We give you the knowledge you desire in order to present your work confidently.