Plagiarism in Scientific Writing: What It Is and How to Avoid It

Amy Clark, Associate Editor, and Teri Surprenant, Managing Editor, Language Editing

March 2020

Scientific research builds on the work of past and contemporary scientists and using the work of others is necessary. However, when presenting your research, you need to recognize any work of others that is included. Plagiarism is unattributed copying of another researcher’s work presented as if it were one’s own. Text recycling , also called self-plagiarism, is re-use of portions of the same text from one’s own previously published work. The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) provides a definition of plagiarism as “both the theft or misappropriation of intellectual property and the substantial unattributed textual copying of another's work.”

Plagiarism is unethical, and if detected it will negatively affect your career. Moreover, textual plagiarism is easy to detect. Publishers regularly use the software iThenticate to check for duplicated text. To learn more about how iThenticate works, read our Learning Nexus article Understanding the Similarity Score.

So how do you avoid textual plagiarism? We recommend the following:

1. Make clear distinctions between your original ideas, data, methods, techniques, and those of other researchers. Properly cite your sources. For more information about how to cite sources, consult our Learning Nexus articles in the Referencing and Citation category.

2. Distinguish the new content in your present study from that of your own earlier work. If discussing your earlier work, provide citations as you would to other researcher’s studies. After all, you deserve the credit!

3. Do not copy complete sentences and/or large amounts of text verbatim (i.e., word-for-word) from published work, including your own published manuscripts. It is essential to summarize or paraphrase, and again, always cite the source.

4. If it makes sense to copy whole sentences or phrases, especially when quoting an individual, use quotation marks around the copied text, in addition to providing the citation.

The key to all of the above steps is to ask 1) whether the reader might be misled into thinking content from someone else’s work is your own, or 2) in the case of text-recycling, the reader might be misled into thinking your own previously published work is being presented for the first time. Remember, always give proper attribution where due.