Plagiarism can occur early on in the writing process. The best way to avoid it is to prepare your paper carefully and use sources confidently.

Time management

One possible reason for plagiarism in an academic paper is lack of time or planning, so that no time remains for proofreading at the end. This can mean that unintentional plagiarism is not detected and removed in time. Timely planning and working on a seminar paper over the course of the entire term can help to avoid such situations. This includes, for example, preparation, conducting and documenting searches, making notes, clarifying questions, gathering relevant literature and sources, and spreading out the writing tasks over several steps. When you plan and prepare well, you will have enough time at the end to check your text for plagiarism (including with special software designed for this purpose, see Step 2.4) and to make any necessary edits.

Are my sources reliable?

Preventing plagiarism requires competent handling of sources. This relates not only to proper citations, but also to the selection and evaluation of source material. Before we use a source, it’s important (particularly in an academic context) to confirm that it’s reliable. Only then is it advisable to work with it and cite it. With internet sources in particular, it can often be challenging to recognize how reliable the information is. In general, we can make a first estimation of the reliability of typical sources based on the following categories:¹

High reliability

• Articles from peer-reviewed journals
• Monographs and book chapters
• Conference proceedings
• Contributions to recognized encyclopedias and reference works
• Dissertations
• Habilitations

Average reliability

• Wikipedia articles
• Entries on private websites

Low reliability

• Private websites of authors without expertise
• Blogs, e.g. of private individuals
• Social media posts
• Posts in discussion forums
• Videos and other multimedia posts by authors or institutions without academic credentials

These broad groupings provide some guidelines for where to be especially careful, but they do not substitute for individual evaluation. When evaluating sources – in particular online – the following criteria and questions can help.²

Autor

• Is the author an institution or a private individual?
• Are there references to the author’s expertise?
• Is there a contact address?
• Can information about the author be found elsewhere?

Sources

• Are the sources fully listed?
• Are the sources reliable?

Topicality

• When was the page created?
• When was the last update?
• Are the linked URLs and sources current and functional?
• Has the destination address changed?
• Are there comments about or evaluations of the links?

Form

• Is the information presented in the format that is most suitable for the topic?
• Is the order of material logical?
• Is the page free of errors? Does it show evidence of having been created with care?
• Does the page have advertising? What kind?
• Are there cross-references to other sources?
• How simple is the page to navigate?
• Is there a built-in search function for internal searches?

Provider

• Who is behind the URL?
• Who operates the server?

Content and audience

• What is the aim of the text or website?
• What message does it attempt to convey?
• Which interests are being promoted?
• What is the target audience?
• Are the aim and purpose identifiable?
• Does the page have an academic or market orientation?

Only after a source proves itself valuable and reliable according to these tests does it make sense to use it for your own research and to accordingly cite, paraphrase and list it properly in your academic paper.

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Literature

¹ Slides taken from the UB course “Datenbanken, Bibliografien, Fachportale: Recherchetechniken in der Geschichtswissenschaft” on the topic of “Evaluation”, prepared by Susanne Schaub Renaux for the course session on 20.10.2020.

¹ See ibid.