Plagiarism is an important ethical issue in research and the academia. It is often committed by early to mid career researchers. This presentation takes the participants through the ethical issue of plagiarism, as well as other ethical issues, such as fabrication and falsification. The presentation also covers ways in which plagiarism can be reduced or avoided. Finally, the presentation takes us through the most robust plagiarism software - TURNITIN.

1. PLAGIARISM IN
SCIENTIFIC WRITING:
DETECTION, AND EFFECTIVE
USE OF TURNITIN
March 3, 2023
FORTUNE EFFIONG
National Secretary, AuthorAID Nigeria

2. WHAT WILL BE COVERED IN THIS
WEBINAR
 What is Plagiarism
 Types of Plagiarism
 Consequences of Plagiarism
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 Why researchers plagiarize
 Avoiding Plagiarism
 TURNITIN/How to RUN a TURNITIN scan
 Interpretation of TURNITIN report
 Software Used to detect plagiarism

3. 1. This lecture note is a mix of the presenter’s scholarly and original
research experiences. This means that, while most of the contents are
the experiences and original contributions of the presenter, findings
and experiences of other researchers have been incorporated.
2. The presenter is not formerly affiliated to TURNITIN or any other
plagiarism detection software developers. Hence, opinions or
experiences that will be shared in this presentation, DOES NOT in any
way reflect the opinions of these organizations.
3. There is NO FUNDING, in cash or in kind, that has been or will be
received for this presentation.
3
DISCLAIMER!!!

4. “
Plagiarism is a lazy man’s excuse and
a careless man’s appology.
FORTUNE EFFIONG
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5. WHAT IS
PLAGIARISM?

6. WHAT IS PLAGIARISM?
◉ Different school of thoughts have defined plagiarism:
◉ The US Office of Research Integrity: “It involves stealing someone
else’s work and lying about it afterward.”
◉ Longman Contemporary English Advanced Learner’s Dictionary: The
act of plagiarism is defined as “when someone uses another person’s
words, ideas, or work and pretends they are their own”.
◉ The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity: Plagiarism is
the appropriation of other people’s material without giving proper
credit
◉ US Federal Policy on Research Misconduct: “Plagiarism is the
appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words
without giving appropriate credit”
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7. WHAT IS PLAGIARISM?
◉ Whatever the school of thought, the basic ideas seem to be that
someone deliberately takes someone else’s work, whether in the
form of an idea, a method, data, results, or text, and presents it as
their own instead of giving credit to the person whose ideas, results,
or words it is.
◉ These are the two core components of plagiarism
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8. TYPES OF
PLAGIARISM

9. TYPES OF PLAGIARISM
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10. FORMS OF
SELF
PLAGIARISM

11. SELF PLAGIARISM
◉ Self Plagiarism is an instance of someone acquiring undeserved
scientific credit by presenting one’s own previously recognized work
as new
◉ Duplicate publication concerns publication of whole articles or texts
(or sets of data or results) more than once without proper notification
of this fact.
◉ When the “self-plagiariser” uses shorter passages of texts (or some
figures, etc.) in repeated instances, we prefer to speak of
inappropriate recycling of material
◉ When the same study or set of experiments is dispensed in small
chunks in different papers just to increase the number of publications,
we have what is commonly known as “salami slicing”.
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12. OTHER ETHICAL
ISSUES

13. OTHER ETHICAL ISSUES
◉ Plagiarism is one of the core ethical issue in research.
◉ The other two being falsification and fabrication
◉ Consider these two scenario, Which of them is Falsification and which
is Fabrication?:
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14. 14
A: “Tomorrow is the due date for my project defense. I was unable to
do my lab work. I’ll just make up some values and analyze. How bad
can it be?”
B:“I noticed most of my female participants have a higher PCV than
the male. There has to be a problem with my data collection. I will
just reduce the PCV value of the female participants to restore
normalcy.”
SCENARIO A AND SCENARIO B

15. WHY DO
RESEARCHERS
PLAGIARIZE?

16. WHY RESEARCHERS PLAGIARIZE?
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17. CONSEQUENCES OF
PLAGIARISM

18. 18

19. AVOIDING
PLAGIARISM

20. 20

21. 21

22. CITATION
◉ A citation is a reference to the source of information used in your
research.
◉ It is of two types, in text citation and end of paper citation (called
“references” in some cases).
◉ An in-text citation is a brief notation within the body of your paper or
presentation that directs the reader to a longer citation, or end-of-
paper citation, that contains all pertinent information about the
source of information.
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23. WHEN TO CITE
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Quoting
Paraphrasing
Summarizing
Facts, statistics,
dates, and
information

24. WHEN NOT TO CITE
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Common
knowledge
Generally
accepted or
observable
facts
Original ideas
and lived
experiences

25. HOW DO YOU CREDIT
◉ This will depend on the citation style employed.
◉ Common citation styles include: APA, Harvard, Vancouver.
◉ An example of citation with vancouver is given below:
◉ E.g “Mass gatherings are possible hotspots for COVID-19 outbreaks…
[9].”
◉ Effiong FB, Opeyemi BA, Dada OE, Enwerem KE. Global Transmission
of SARS-COV-2 in Schools, Religious Centres and Markets: An
Exploratory Review. Int J Health Life Sci. 2021 Apr;7(2):e110729.
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26. AI TOOLS FOR REFERENCING
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◉ SOFTWARES:
◉ Mendeley
◉ Zotero
◉ Endnote
• DATABASES
• Pubmed
• Google scholar
• OTHERS:
• Citethisforme

29. More about paraphrasing in a jiffy.…

30. PLAGIARISM DETECTION
SOFTWARES

31. SOFWARES USED TO DETECT PLAGIARISM
31
iThenticate
TURNITIN
HelioBLAST
Viper
Grammerly

32. WHAT IS TURNITIN?
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Turnitin searches its database of previously published
works and student submissions for any potentially
troubling similarities.
Based on this comparison, it creates an Originality Report.
This includes a Similarity Index score indicating how much of
the content from a student's submission was found in other
sources.

33. RUNNING A
TURNITIN SCAN

34. 34

35. 35

36. 36

37. 37

38. 38

39. 39

40. 40

41. 41

42. 42

43. 43
TURNITIN COLOR CODES

44. INTERPRETATION OF TURNITIN
OUTPUT

45. HOW TO
PARAPHRASE:
STEPS TO TAKE

46. 46
HOW TO PARAPHRASE: STEPS TO TAKE
46
READ REREAD CHECK
POINT THE
MAIN IDEA
PARAPHRASE REFERENCE

47. AI TOOLS FOR PARAPHRASING
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• Quillbot
• Paraphrase.io

48. REFERENCES
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US Department of Energy. (2022). Research misconduct: Information and Frequently Asked Questions on
Policies and Procedures. https://science.osti.gov/grants/Policy-and-Guidance/Research-Misconduct
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. (2022). Plagiarize.
https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/plagiarize
Greenberg R. (2013). The problem of plagiarism among students. Hubpages.
https://discover.hubpages.com/education/The-problem-of-plagiarism-among-students
Virtuallibrary. (n.d.).Avoiding plagiarism. https://www.virtuallibrary.info/avoiding-plagiarism.html
Kroemer T. (n.d.). A Guide for Writing and Editing a Research Manuscript.
https://www.goldbio.com/articles/article/a-guide-for-writing-and-editing-a-research-manuscript
Ponomarenko A. (n.d). Types of Plagiarism. https://www.customessaymeister.com/blog/types-of-plagiarism

49. SOCIALS
◉ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fortune-effiong-
2068591a1/
◉ Facebook:
https://web.facebook.com/fortune.effiong.14?_rdc=1&am
p;_rdr
◉ Twitter:
https://twitter.com/fortune_effiong?t=L0cyUt_BCwLsP
ZG9NSFnQA&s=09

50. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME
+2349097015368 Fortune Effiong
on all SM handles (FB,
LinkedIn, Twitter)
effiongfortuneb@gmail.com
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