It is very common in undergraduate and, even more so, in graduate school to face that moment when it is necessary to write a scientific text, be it a short article for presentation in congresses, symposia or for publication in magazines, or a more robust text, monograph or thesis. We know how difficult this moment can be, since, through no fault of ours, many of us young people entered the university unprepared to write a text that we have no idea how it should be structured.
Often, the lack of adequate teaching guidance makes the process much more complicated, especially when combined with the difficulty of reading the basic texts, the pressure to produce a good job and the academic requirements we must meet, such as choosing a topic and a relevant research object, the use of an appropriate methodology and the presentation of coherent results, in addition to the standard text standardization. All of these concerns together make writing herculean work.
Plagiarism in academic work
With regard to academic requirements, the issue of plagiarism stands out. Many teachers, as soon as they apply their first job or even on the first day of class, talk about the subject. However, they rarely define precisely what constitutes plagiarism for the academy and how to avoid it. We know, basically, that it is about presenting a text that, in fact, is not yours as if it were. It is to quote parts of a text without referencing it, as prescribed:
- Direct citations must come with a 4 cm indent, justified and, in parentheses, the author’s name, the year of publication of the text and the page from which it was taken must be specified;
- Indirect citations (paraphrases) must come with the author’s name and the publication date in parentheses; all citations must be referenced in the bibliography.
But are these norms and prescriptions capable of preventing plagiarism from occurring? Certainly not. So, there is paraphrasing tool to rewrite the text.
