I.

Avoid Plagiarism Outline

a. Keep track of the sources you consult in your research; print electronic
sources, or at least, store them in a secure and easily accessible folder.
It is really easy to forget sources or materials derived from the internet so in order
to properly credit and cite the authors and the works, one must have a system in
collecting online sources, especially for someone like me who constantly rely on
online materials.

b. Keep sources in correct context

Whenever I look into a website for possible information that might help me for an
academic work or even for leisure purposes, I check the status of the authors’ or
the group of authors’ association or their website’s agenda. One source might lean
politically on the right or left. Such agenda is necessary to be known in order to
cite a clear and unbiased source of information. Unbiased information is definitely
preferable than a biased one.
c. Don't cut and paste: File and label your sources. While paraphrasing is needed
to bolster the communication skills of a student, such act can be risky. However, even
when one paraphrases, one must still credit and cite his/her sources and to annotate
that I have paraphrased such and mention the author’s name and the material. In an
event where I do copy and paste, I make sure to cite the article, the section, and the
code. Moreover, I make sure the sources are up to date in terms of the information
contained inside.
d. Keeping my notes and draft separate
As a student, I tend to scribble a lot and just randomly note certain
information that I might think of or hear. Sometimes though, I tend to scribble and write
those notes to my actual notes or actual case digests when the scribbled random ones
should have been placed in a more appropriate folder or word file. By keeping my notes
and my draft separate, I can have a better purview as to when I wrote such note and its
significance to the topics assigned to us. It will also help me in preventing plagiarism.
e. Never saving my citations for later. I have learned this lesson back in college when
I did my thesis. I made sure that I cite everything after I got an information from a source
because there’s too much information and it could be overwhelming in trying to
remember where I got a particular source from. I always make sure I enlist the source
where I got it from immediately after obtaining such.
F. Keeping a source trail and backing up my work. I usually have a separate word file
where I would put all the footnotes and citations on a separate page and make sure that it
is consistent with the paper that I will submit in terms of its footnote section.
1

1
Harvard Guide to Using Sources: How to Avoid Plagiarism, April 4, 2015, available at
https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/kmeng2150spring2017/files/2017/03/How-to-Avoid-Plagiarism-%C2%A7-Harvard-
Guide-to-Using-Sources.pdf, (last accessed October 15, 2020)