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Physics: Avoiding Plagiarism

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of someone else’s words or ideas. In academic circles, it is considered deceptive, corrupt and even criminal behaviour. It is possible to avoid plagiarism by following this guideline prepared by METU AWC.

Acts which are considered plagiarism:

  • Buying / Borrowing from  someone else’s work without consent
  • Hiring someone to write your work
  • Copying from another source without citing (intentionally or by accident!)
  • Building on someone else’s ideas without citing

Tips for Plagiarism Prevention

Don't procrastinate.  Students who rush their work can make careless mistakes, such as forgetting to include a particular citation, or not having all the information needed for documentation.  Students under pressure may also make poor choices, such as not documenting sources and hoping the professor won't notice.  Believe us- your professor will notice, and you won't like the long-term consequeneces.

Take careful notes.  You need to be very clear in your notes whether you are writing down word-for-word what you found somewhere else, or if you are jotting down your own idea.  You should take down all the information you will need to create your citations.

Cite your sources. Whenever you quote, paraphrase, summarize, or share an unusual fact, tell your reader where the information came from.

Get comfortable with the required citation style.  The most commonly used citation styles on our campus are APA, MLA, and Chicago/Turabian.  While they share many similarities, they also have differing requirements in regards to what and when to cite.

Ask your professor. If you're not sure about citing something, check with your instructor. Ultimately, she will be the one grading your assigment- or bringing you up on plagiarism charges.

Taken from: http://libguides.radford.edu/content.php?pid=48924&sid=380382

Web pages about plagiarism

Plagiarism.org

This commercial site is designed to help educators and students develop a better sense of what plagiarism means and to teach the planning, organizational, and citation skills essential for producing quality writing and research.

Quick guide

taken from http://libguides.fiu.edu/citation

Plagiarism - METU guide

This manuscript  has been prepared by a commission under The Research Centre for Applied Ethics. Types of plagiarism, samples for acts of plagiarism, strategies for detecting plagiarism, strategies for preventing plagiarism, suggestions for avoiding plagiarism for students and more information are available in this manuscript. 

Turnitin Software

Plagiarism prevention checker

Turnitin, is a web-based plagiarism detection software. In order to be registered to turnitin, please send a support ticket via https://itsupport.metu.edu.tr/ to use the service. Name, academic/administrative position and department at METU should be specified in this mail. Note that only academic personell ( lecturers and instructors) can use this service. MSc/PhD and Research  Assistants cannot be registered to the system with proper privilege for uploading papers/articles. Instead, the thesis advisor or a previously registered INSTRUCTOR may upload the papers and may share the results with students/assistants. In addition an instructor may open a master class and add students/assistants as Teaching Assistant to the system with the rights to upload paper/article.

After registration an email from turnitin will be received. Following this email, instructors will be able to check plagiarism by uploading the papers they prefer. 

Caution: While uploading the papers be careful in entering data such as name surname etc. Even small differences may result in %100 similarity with mistakenly entered paper and to solve the problem may not be easy. Article may be mistakenly classified as plagiaristic.

About Article Deletion

If you need help about article deletion, Please contact your instructor regarding paper deletion. The instructor will then need to contact the METU's Turnitin Administrator by using the link https://itsupport.metu.edu.tr/ . deletion request are submitted by the account administrator of METU to Turnitin support unit. It is needed to provide the Class ID number, Assignment name, and Submission ID number. To expedite the process, please provide your instructor with the Class ID number, Assignment name, and Submission ID number. If you simply wish to resubmit to your assignment in order to submit a revised version of your paper, your instructor can enable this option for you. There is no need to delete a paper from the database in this situation

For questions about usage of the software please refer to 

Turnitin Help Center

Turnitin Öğretmen Kılavuzu

Turnitin Öğrenci Kılavuzu

Turnitin Manuals and Guides

If help is needed for deleting articles you should provide information about Class ID number, Assignment name, and Submission ID number.

Turnitinden Belge Silme Kılavuzu

 Note: to resubmit  assignments in order to submit a revised version of  the paper, the instructors can enable this option by  themselves. There is no need to delete a paper from the database in this situation.

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