Writing scientific research contains a set of challenges to come up with a strong research paper by providing proof and evidence in addition to collecting previous research related to the same topic. Nonetheless, this must be done carefully without falling into the trap of scientific plagiarism.

But first, what is scientific plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the use of words or ideas in your research paper from another researcher or even from your previous work without documenting this use or returning the work to its original owner. This is considered, so to speak, a serious academic and intellectual crime that leads to many negative consequences, including the rejection of the research and the loss of the researcher’s credibility and academic reputation.

How then can you avoid plagiarism?

1. Make plenty of time to write

The most common reason many academics resort to plagiarism is that copying and pasting is faster and easier than creating and writing new text. But remember that journals now routinely check every new scientific paper they reach for plagiarism and if your paper is rejected on this basis, you have lost valuable time that could have been invested in writing.

2. Avoid self-plagiarism

If you want to quote from your previous work, you must reformulate your content and do not just copy and paste the text as it is literally from the reference; the use of materials you published before without quoting is called self-plagiarism.

3. The use of quotes

Use quotation marks to indicate that the text is from another scientific paper.

4. Paraphrase with reference to the source

Re-draft the idea in your own style, and this requires you to understand the idea well so that you can reformulate it correctly in your own style without prejudice to the meaning with reference to the original author.

5. Read, read, then read

Read many scientific papers on the same topic and read for good writers who are known for the quality of their writing. This increases the enrichment of your vocabulary, which helps you a lot in writing and the ability to paraphrase easily and effectively.

6. Finally, perform a plagiarism check on your scientific paper before submitting it to the journal to ensure that it is free of plagiarism by using one of the well-known programs such as (Turnitin) and (iThenticate) and other programs.