 Hello, my name is Roger Watson. I'm the Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education and Practice, and that's published by Elsevier. In this session, I want to look at some tips to avoid accidental plagiarism. First of all, what is plagiarism? Well, plagiarism is using other people's ideas without acknowledgement. It can happen at any stage in the research process, and what I'm going to refer to here specifically, of course, is in the writing up and attempts to publish research by submitting manuscripts to journals and subsequently having them published. So plagiarism is a gross violation of publication ethics, and it should be avoided at all costs. And journals take great steps to check for similarity in the manuscripts that are submitted to them with other sources that are already published. What we try to do is to prevent the publication of anything that is subsequently found to be similar to other sources. So we do take steps to try to avoid this, and we do this by using similarity checking software. One of the most popular packages used in the publishing industry is Identicate, which is very similar to Turnitin, which those of you who are academics are probably already familiar with, but there are other packages available. So accidental plagiarism can occur and does occur. When we check a manuscript, when it's submitted to the journal, we don't have any particular percentage of similarity in mind. What we do is we will check the manuscript regardless of the similarity. The software that we use to detect the similarity will tell us where that similarity is. So how do you avoid this accidental plagiarism? Well, one of the best ways to do that is to quote and to paraphrase and to summarize things correctly. So there are really two approaches to this. One is the writing approach, which involves paraphrasing what other people have said. In other words, putting the ideas that they have conveyed in a publication into your own words, putting that into your manuscript. And of course, you still have to acknowledge that source because that could still be plagiarizing in the sense of stealing someone's ideas. But you have to make it clear that it's someone else's ideas, but you don't write it in the same way as they write it in their manuscript. So try paraphrasing, try writing things in another form. I know this is difficult for people using English as a second language, but there are services available out there or find a friendly colleague who's fluent in English to help you with this. The other thing to do is to cite your sources correctly. In other words, attach a reference to them and to do it in the correct style. I've got different referencing systems and have different styles of doing it, but normally quotes will require to be indented in quote marks and with the name and the year of the publication. And usually if it's from a book or from another article, the page on which that piece of information has been found. That's how to quote correctly and to avoid being accused of plagiarism. This will be picked up as being similar, but it will be clear that it's been cited properly. Another aspect there, of course, is that you can't use too much of other sources in your manuscript or too many of them or too big a single quote. There's no hard and fast guidance about this, but I would reckon on a page of A4 double spaced with size 12 font that you probably shouldn't use more than four or five lines from another source. But again, that's not a rule, that's just guidance. Please don't go quoting whole paragraphs from other sources or whole pages, that just doesn't work at all. So you need to be selective and convey just the ideas that you want to quote directly because the other person's words are important. You want to get it correct and you don't have a way of rewarding it. But again, it must be quoted properly and it must be referenced properly. To paraphrase properly, try and put things really into your own words. And what I would recommend that you do is to, if you've got sources sitting around you, articles that you've marked up with pieces in there that you think will be useful, put them to one side and write what you want in your own words. And then come back to the articles and only quote from other sources directly if absolutely necessary. I would also recommend if you have it available and if those of you working in higher education institutions will probably have access to Turnitin, I would recommend running your manuscript through a similarity detector just to check. So do make some efforts to check for similarity to other sources. Do make sure that you have all your sources organized properly. If you've seen an idea somewhere, do make sure that you keep that reference so that you're not tempted to to pledge your eyes or to to use the same word that you've read somewhere. Do make sure that you can quote it properly. Do keep good notes as you write. Try to try to note things in your own words as you're going through articles. And again, as I emphasize, try to put the other articles aside when you're writing and that sort of reduces what might be the temptation to pledge your eyes. Try to write things in your own words. So what I would say there's your right without sitting surrounded by the references right in your own voice and say what you want to say. Now just to finish off, I came across some very good advice, five points from the University of Nottingham webpage in the UK on avoiding plagiarism. I've said some of these things already, but it's put rather nicely here. Five points. The first point is don't just copy in your writing. Try to describe other people's ideas, you know, using references obviously and try to make sure that they are important to your argument. Second point, which I haven't mentioned previously is use a range of sources. Don't go citing continually from the same article. Try and use a range of sources to support what you're saying and that way you'll be less tempted or less likely to be accused of accidental plagiarism. Develop your own style. Don't try to write in the way that other people write and keep good quality notes and do use quotation marks.