Plagiarism is an intellectual misconduct often committed while writing. It is most common among undergraduates, postgraduates and others in the higher academic cadre. While writing their academic or education projects, students ‘play smart’ by taking advantage of the online resources to makeup for their writing weaknesses; making final year research projects the most common education researches with plagiarism.

What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is a word used to describe the presentation of a borrowed thought, idea and written expression of another author without an attempt to acknowledge the original source.

It is very observable that undergraduates hardly miss out the part where they have to quote an author in their education projects. Probably because they ensure to have a longer queue of references, citations and bibliographies at the end of the research paper page. Meanwhile they commit a more serious offense silently; lets talk about it.

Paraphrasing, that’s the word to describe the act of trying to change the words of an intellectual work you actually copied online or from a book so that it passes the same message and meaning which the original author intended without any attempt to acknowledge the original author.
Plagiarism is a very common research misconduct that undergraduates indulge in among other acts of plagiarism.

Common forms of plagiarism associated with education projects.

• Paraphrasing: The act of restructuring a sentence and changing the original words of the author with yours to pass on the same message.
• Using the exact words of the author without quoting him/her
• Quoting the author’s words without citation.
• Citing an author that does not exist
• Referencing an author who you have not cited in your work
Among others...

How to avoid plagiarism in education project

• Paraphrase but ensure to cite whose original idea it is. Paraphrasing requires no quotation marks or inverted commas, just the acknowledgment will do justice.
• Quote the exact words of an author and enclose the words in a quotation mark (“ ”) to show they are not your words and ensure to cite the author’s name, the year of publication and the exact page where you have drawn the idea from.
• Ensure not to cite a non existent author to make up for your research misconduct .
• Include a reference page at the end of your research page
• Do not include an author in your reference page when you have not cited the work in your research
• Use plagiarism-check tools if necessary.

Intellectual misconduct and theft is a punishable offense; do not fall for it.