DO NOT PLAGIARIZE…. PARAPHRASE

Innumerable times we have heard that the rate of plagiarism is the highest among our authors and researchers. Does this mean we are more prone to copying and cheating or is it a simple demonstration of lack of awareness of the rules? Most of us would have to accept it is the second reason. 

There are  many rules to keep in mind while preparing  a scientific manuscript.   One notable yet often  forgotten  rule is  work that has a copy right should not be duplicated exactly,  it should either be paraphrased or  placed in quotation marks along with the author's name.

Any text should be considered to represent two different, independent entities. One is the information that it conveys, and the other is the manner in which it conveys the information. The information can be presented with a citation.  The manner in which it was conveyed or the exact sentence / phrase can not be used without using a quotation mark. The information conveyed by anyone even if discovered by them is essentially from a universal pool of knowledge that anyone could have found and thus a citation merely naming the person/s who found or presented them is sufficient. The exact manner in which information is presented  by anyone is their true intellectual property since no other person  could have access to  that  thought process. 

The following example may help make the concept more clear:
 
The statement “Thick & dense collagen fibers in OSF function as regular connective tissue similar to a tendon where the direction of collagen fiber alignment occurs along the direction of stress” from an article by-  Smitha BR, Donoghue M. Clinical and histopathological evaluation of collagen fiber orientation in patients with oral submucous fibrosis. J Oral Maxillofac Pathol 2011; 15: 154-60,   is representing a specific fact as described by authors in relation to behavior of thick and dense fibers in OSF. Theoretically, any interested researcher could have found this fact. However, no other researcher would have presented it in this particular manner  using these exact words.  This statement can,  therefore, be used by another author either by  duplicating the statement  and placing it in a quotation mark as used above or by paraphrasing the sentence while preserving its implications for e.g. Collagen fibers in OSF which are thick & dense function in a manner similar to a tendon with the collagen fibers aligning themselves along the direction of stress (Smitha BR and coauthor).

Remembering to paraphrase appropriately is only a small step towards a plagiarism free publishing, yet  it is certainly a  start.

professional   resources such as http://www.ithenticate.com/  are also very good tools for avoiding accidental plagiarism.