CEE 700 Research Methods (James): Avoiding Plagiarism

This webpage describes how the UNLV Graduate College uses iThenticate software to check for plagiarism in theses and dissertations, and how to get your copy as a UNLV graduate student.

The UNLV Writing Center offers workshops, one-on-one consultations, online tips, and other resources to help writers at any level to improve their work or their writing process.

Request this handout from the Writing Center. It has suggestions on how to best paraphrase and avoid a form of plagiarism known as "patchwriting".

The tips in the "Annotating and Evaluating Sources" tab on this webguide will help you ensure that you are using your own words in your writing, or carefully tracking direct quotations from other sources.

As this webpage states, most plagiarism is unintentional, yet our codes of conduct and expectations for coursework and publications insist upon original writing, properly cited ideas, or clearly indicated direct quotations. Build good note-taking and citation-tracking habits, and plan for time to properly paraphrase and summarize the materials you are using.

Cornell University provides a useful guide to what plagiarism is, how to avoid it, and an online, anonymous quiz ("Exercises" link) that can be used to test your understanding.

Sometimes writers struggle to build a sentence because we're not familiar with common structures and phrases to express the meaning we intend. The Academic Phrasebank can prompt ideas and may be particularly useful for those who speak/write in multiple languages.