Accountability in Research Policies and Quality Assurance
ISSN: 0898-9621 (Print) 1545-5815 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gacr20
Ways to Avoid and Dodge Plagiarism in Scientific Writing? Personal Experience Aman Chowdhry M.D.S. To cite this article: Aman Chowdhry M.D.S. (2016) Ways to Avoid and Dodge Plagiarism in Scientific Writing? Personal Experience, Accountability in Research, 23:3, 195-197, DOI: 10.1080/08989621.2015.1084472 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2015.1084472
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Date: 15 August 2016, At: 22:06
ACCOUNTABILITY IN RESEARCH 2016, VOL. 23, NO. 3, 195–197 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2015.1084472
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Ways to Avoid and Dodge Plagiarism in Scientific Writing? Personal Experience Aman Chowdhry, M.D.S. Department of Oral Pathology and Microbiology, Faculty of Dentistry, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India
Dear Editor, I am an oral pathologist interested in the field of plagiarism detection and prevention. In reference to the editorial in Resnik (2012) and the letter to the editor in Wiwanitkit (2015), I would like to thank the authors for clarifications and highlighting pitfalls on perplexities of plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.”
As a personal experience, I feel it is very easy to find texts related to any topic while drafting a research paper. But it is not always easy to add that information into your manuscript without falling into the plagiarism trap. No doubt, there are different extents of plagiarism, from insignificant to serious, with different formal repercussions for the plagiarist. Most authors, if guilty, might plead “unintentional plagiarism,” but that is certainly more acceptable with students (seminars, assignments, etc.) than with academic staff (publications, conference oral/poster presentations) (Das and Panjabi 2011). Being accused of misconduct initiates a painful process that can disrupt one’s research and career. To avoid such a situation, it is important that ethical lines are drawn between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. Academic authors should learn the skills to present their own work before they attempt publishing. Through this letter, I recommend that readers and aspiring scientific authors understand and incorporate the following measures to ensure their manuscript is free from plagiarism: (1) Plan the time required to complete the study so as to avoid pressure to publish. This holds true especially for post-graduate students having deadlines to submit the work or faculty in need of API (annual performance index) score for promotion.
CONTACT Dr. Aman Chowdhry
[email protected] and
[email protected] Department of Oral Pathology and Microbiology, Faculty of Dentistry, Jamia Millia Islamia, Room No. 303, New Delhi 110025, India. © 2016 Taylor & Francis
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(2) New authors, lacking experience in scientific writing not knowing how to draft the manuscript, are recommended to join a group of experienced researchers. Working with them will provide a vast amount of knowledge and skill of scientific writing (Peeran et al. 2013). (3) Always make notes while reading an article related to the study to be done. When writing your own manuscript, read your notes, not the original paper. This may be a way to avoid similar words and may lead to unintentional paraphrasing. Paraphrasing should not be misconstrued. It means to put something in your own words, not just taking someone else’s thoughts and changing a few words (Kumar et al. 2014). (4) Learn how to cite, quote, and reference properly. Follow the document formatting guidelines. Authors should understand that citations do not reduce the value of an article (Peeran et al. 2013). (5) Do not directly quote considerably large portions of a manuscript or reproduce tables or figures or images since it requires more formal authorization from the original publisher. Measures such as attaching metadata and watermarking of digital images should be done in order to avert their malicious reuse (Chowdhry et al. 2014). (6) Writing many articles on similar topics and submitting to different journals at the same time should be avoided (Das and Panjabi 2011). (7) Use anti-plagiarism tools to detect any accidental/unintentional plagiarism. Freely available software can be used for the same (example: CrossCheck). Using plagiarism checker services is a great way to assess paraphrasing and other anti-plagiarism skills. (8) Manuscripts can be submitted for scientific language editing to various editorial sites (e.g., http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageediting/). (9) Colleagues/peers/statisticians having research background and publications in reputed journals can be asked to check the text. These suggestions may be both appropriate and of great help. (10) A cover letter to the editor can be enclosed with the manuscript for giving an undertaking of unintentional overlap. Successful citation without using exact phrases or copying of exact methodology is still a dilemma for upcoming authors. Through this letter, we make an attempt to help naive authors to work in the right direction. The above discussion also suggests that senior researchers should conduct workshops for preparation of manuscripts avoiding plagiarism. Knowledge of plagiarism and its prevention should be an integral part of undergraduate/postgraduate curriculum since “prevention is better than punishing later.”
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References Chowdhry, A., D. Popli, K. Sircar, and A. Tandon. 2014. Image manipulation: Fraudulence in digital dental records: Study and review. Journal of Forensic Dental Sciences 6 (1):31–35. doi:10.4103/0975-1475.127767. Das, N., and M. Panjabi. 2011. Plagiarism: Why is it such a big issue for medical writers? Perspectives in Clinical Research 2:67–71. doi:10.4103/2229-3485.80370. Kumar, P. M., N. S. Priya, S. Musalaiah, and M. Nagasree. 2014. Knowing and avoiding plagiarism during scientific writing. Annals of Medical and Health Sciences Research 4 (Suppl 9):S193–8. doi:10.4103/2141-9248.141957. Peeran, S. W., A. M. Ahmed, M. H. Mugrabi, and S. A. Peeran. 2013. Simple steps to avoid plagiarism and improve scientific writing. Libyan Journal of Medicine 8:21825. doi:10.3402/ ljm.v8i0.21825. Resnik, D. B. 2012. Editorial: Plagiarism: Words and Ideas. Accountability in Research 19 (5):269–72. doi:10.1080/08989621.2012.718677. Wiwanitkit, V. 2015. Letter to the editor: Plagiarism screening by the journal: Is there still any pitfall? Accountability in Research 22 (3):198–99. doi:10.1080/08989621.2014.922381.
