Apologize. Tell your teacher (and also mean it) that you are sorry you plagiarized your paper, albeit unintentionally. Inform your teacher that you know that plagiarism is wrong, that you are really an honest student, and that you didn't mean to plagiarize.
For example, submitting a whole paper by someone else will have the most severe consequences, while accidental citation errors are considered less serious. If you're a student, then you might fail the course, be suspended or expelled, or be obligated to attend a workshop on plagiarism.
Believe it or not, it's not hard to mistakenly plagiarize. Accidental plagiarism is usually the result of being rushed, unorganized, or uninformed about the citation and research process. Whether it's an accident or an intentional act of plagiarism, the consequences are essentially the same.
Unlike intentional plagiarism, unintentional plagiarism occurs when a writer, without malice or culpability, uses a direct quote word for word or paraphrases another's idea without citing the original source.
Academic misconduct can lead to failing a paper, a class, or even dropping out of college for the plagiarist. The particular policy on plagiarism, accidental or not, depends on the professor and the school. However, plagiarism is academic misconduct, whether it is intentional or not.
This may or may not be considered as misconduct in itself depending on the rules set for your class or assignment. You need to ask them to show you which parts of your work they think you have plagiarised and prove it. Universities use a plagiarism checker routinely for everything that students submit.
If a person did commit plagiarism accidentally, are they really at fault? The short answer is yes, it is possible. So many people, especially inexperienced writers, accidentally commit plagiarism by not writing their content properly or not citing their sources accurately.
In most cases, the dictum can be applied appropriately: plagiarism is plagiarism. However, there are in fact degrees of plagiarism: one can steal an entire paper, or a section of a paper, or a page, a paragraph or a sentence. Even copying phrases without credit and quotation marks can be considered plagiarism.
Turnitin does not check for plagiarism in a piece of work. Instead, we will check a student's work against our databases, and if there are instances where a student's writing is similar to, or matches against, one of our sources, we will bring this to the instructor's attention for review.
Some professors use plagiarism checkers like Turnitin. Others might pull up a search engine and search for commonly used words and phrases in your paper. Some may look to see the check-lists found on academic databases.
Turnitin Originality Checks
You should mark the assessment as seen taking account of poor academic practice if appropriate. 20 – 40% with less than 10% from one source This score would suggest poor academic practice and would require some further consideration.
The Similarity Index percentage
This shows the total amount of matched text as a proportion of the assignment. This 'at a glance' guide should not be used as a measure of plagiarism. Even a 1% score could potentially be plagiarised. There is no ideal percentage to look for.
As a guide a returned percentage of below 15% would probably indicate that plagiarism has not occurred. However, if the 15% of matching text is one continuous block this could still be considered plagiarism. A high percentage would probably be anything over 25% (Yellow, orange or red).
Accidental plagiarism means plagiarizing the content unintentionally. It commonly occurs due to lack of proper citations or wrong citations, forgetting or neglecting to quote, or accidentally using the same phrases or similar combinations of words as given in the original.
Accidental Plagiarism might occur when you do not really understand how to properly paraphrase, quote and cite your research. Not knowing the proper method of documentation can result in students misattributing someone else's words or ideas as their own.
Improper paraphrasing is a very common form of plagiarism. This occurs when one lifts a direct phrase from another work and changes just a few words - and then claims the work as wholly their own.
If you have took an information from somewhere else, may it be your textbook or may it be from an website, but do not credit it properly, it is plagiarism. Looks like in your case, you have done it unintentionally. Confess your situation. Don't feel guilty; your professor's behaviour is not your responsibility.
Plagiarism allegations can cause a student to be suspended or expelled. Their academic record can reflect the ethics offense, possibly causing the student to be barred from entering college from high school or another college. Schools, colleges, and universities take plagiarism very seriously.
The best way to avoid getting caught plagiarizing is to double-check the content you copy. Proofread it over and make sure it matches your work. Compare whatever you're about to copy to your original work for illegible jumbles of words and sentences. Prepare a draft before you copy and paste.
Average similarity index – up to about 50% of matches
It is quite normal for an essay to have up to 50% of matches to other items; or even more. This does not mean you are guilty of plagiarism.
As a guide, somewhere between 15-20% might be considered a good score to aim for.
Green: One word to 24% matching text. Yellow: 25-49% matching text. Orange: 50-74% matching text. Red: 75-100% matching text.
A score of 0% indicates that no matches have been found whilst a score of, 100% means that all the text is matching. Note that matching text is likely to include correctly referenced and quoted text as well as text which has not been referenced at all.
Too high? A score above 25% could indicate plagiarism, or it might just mean that the assignment has a long bibliography and a number of direct quotes. If small stretches of text are highlighted, just one or two words, it could be that these words are commonly found together in multiple texts.