HOW TO INCREASE A PAPER'S ORIGINALITY

In an academic culture, it is understood that knowledge always builds on other knowledge, and originality grows from an understanding of other ideas. For this reason, academic writing by default involves the use of other texts and ideas, which is not only permitted, but expected. In using other texts, it is important to acknowledge the origin of the ideas and their authors. Simply copying text or ideas without explicit acknowledgment is considered dishonest, although it may not always be intentional. The term Academic Integrity refers to honesty and transparency in academic writing- Turnitin. 



 An Originality Report might show a high similarity index for a number of reasons.  Depending on the reason, you may or may not be able to ‘fix’ the problem. Here are the major reasons why your paper might show a high similarity index and how to try and fix them:

Quotations appearing as text matches even though you cited them - You may have inserted a direct quote and cited the author in your work, without placing quotation marks ("...") at the beginning and end of the quote. This is easy to fix -insert quotation marks around any directly quoted material and make sure you have properly acknowledged the source.

Overusing quotations - In general, avoid using quotations unless there is an absolute need to. In many cases, the evidence you use is best written in your own words while acknowledging the original author. Reserve quotations for times when specific language is used that can’t be expressed in a different way. For example technical terms, a famous phrase, or a concise statement that if changed even slightly, would change its entire meaning.

Citing all sources yet the similarity index remains high - copying and pasting then changing the wording (not a good practice) could lead to this because most words could still match the original text. Instead, develop note-taking habits, read the original work and use your own words to support your argument (need help with effective note-taking and paraphrasing? visit http://ird.rmuti.ac.th/rpc/pages/frm_login.php and sign up)

A lot of matches to entries in the reference list -Sometimes, these matches can artificially increase your similarity index although the reference list or the bibliography is not included in the similarity index so you can't really 'fix' this problem. 

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