When writing a research paper, you have to make sure that the material you use for it is completely unique. Educational institutes don’t take plagiarism lightly, and they can penalize students who try to use shortcuts when writing their papers.
In order to avoid getting yourself penalized or getting your research paper rejected, you have to know how to write unique content for it. The explanatory text (such as the literature review), as well as the analytical material (such as the results and observations), have to be originally composed so that there is no chance of duplication in them.
In this post, that is basically what we’re going to be helping you with. We’re going to mention some steps and tips that you can follow to write unique research papers.
Steps and Tips for Writing Unique Research Papers
Without further ado, let’s get started with the tips and steps.
1. Span Your Research On Multiple Sources
The very first thing that you have to do in order to write unique material for your research papers is to get your research right. If you go wrong in the research phase, you can make different types of blunders in the writing part. One such blunder is accidentally copying content.
Let’s explain that a little.
When you want to conduct your research for writing your research paper, be sure to spread it out over multiple sources. For example, you could open up a couple of reliable research papers, journals, books and websites and then take your inspiration collectively from all of them.
The benefit of broadening your research in this way is that you don’t pick up the style and method of a particular source. You won’t accidentally mimic someone, which is conducive to avoiding plagiarism.
If, for example, you take your information only from a single source, then the style and method of their writing as well as their provided information can rub off on you. This can lead you to duplicate their content unknowingly.
2. Use Citations and References Where Necessary
“Unique content”, in the context of research papers, refers to such material that is not plagiarized. In other words, if you ever need to use someone else’s observations or results in your paper, you can cite them properly. This won’t count as plagiarism or anything.
So, that is basically what our second tip is about.
When writing your research paper, if you need to quote someone verbatim, or use any of their material as it is, then you should use a citation to accredit the source. When creating the citation, be sure to follow the format and style defined by your institute. Some common citation formats include:
- APA
- MLA
- Chicago
- Harvard
3. Check for Plagiarism Using a Reliable Tool
Normally, it would make sense that if you just don’t copy anyone when writing the paper, your research paper would automatically be unique. However, that’s not the case.
Since there are so many sources available on the internet and since there is a lot of previously published material, your research paper can accidentally match with any of them even if you don’t do it deliberately.
That is why it is necessary to use a plagiarism checker free to detect any such duplication in your work. We say ‘free of cost’ because plagiarism-checking can be a recurring requirement and it can be a little difficult to manage a paid tool every time.
Moving on, if you happen to detect any plagiarism in your research paper, you can take the necessary steps to remove it so that it can become unique.
This leads us to our next step…
4. Paraphrase Duplicated Parts
An efficient method for getting rid of plagiarism is to rephrase the specific parts through the paraphrasing tools.
A paraphrasing tool essentially work by changing and altering the input content in order to make it appear different but with the same meaning as its original form. This is done by replacing words with their synonyms and changing the phrases as well as the sentence structures.
If, after using a plagiarism checker, there are some parts in your research paper that are matching with an existing source, you can run them through a paraphraser. The text will get changed and the duplication will get eliminated.
However, once you are done with this process, be sure to check for plagiarism again before finalizing.
Conclusion
If you want your research paper to get accepted, you have to make sure that it is completely unique. Most institutes usually give a tolerated plagiarism limit, but it’s better to play it safe and keep it at 0%.
By following the steps and tips that we’ve mentioned above, you will be able to create unique material for your paper.
