Using the ideas of others and integrating them within your own discussion is an important element of developing your own ‘voice’ as an academic writer. Paraphrasing, or summarising someone else's research in your own words, is one way of doing this.
The ability to paraphrase the work of other researchers effectively is a key study skill, because it allows you to synthesise other people's research into your own, but also because the act of paraphrasing requires you to understand a concept and to be able to describe it in terms that make sense to you.
When a student’s work is identified as potential plagiarism it is often because they have not paraphrased well enough and there are too many similarities with the original source. It often comes as a surprise to the student to know that giving a reference in this instance is not enough and that the idea they are trying to paraphrase needs to be completely re-phrased using their own words.
When a student’s work is identified as potential plagiarism it is often because they have not paraphrased well enough and there are too many similarities with the original source. It often comes as a surprise to the student to know that giving a reference in this instance is not enough and that the idea they are trying to paraphrase needs to be completely re-phrased using their own words.
Have a look at the following exercise:
This is an extract from a recently published journal article, imagine you are interested in the ideas expressed in the section highlighted.
“As cognition declines and motor impairment worsens, fixation duration becomes significantly longer. The longer fixation duration is therefore a potential reflection not just of subcortical oculomotor deficits but may also serve to highlight the involvement of fronto-parietal eye fields and/or dorsal and ventral streams in the neurodegenerative process in Parkinson’s disease. In support of this argument, Perneczky et al. (2011) demonstrated negative correlations between frontal executive function, grey matter volume in the frontal and parietal eye fields and the latency of visually evoked saccades (Archibald et al, 2013).”
From: Archibald, N.K., Hutton, S.B., Clarke, M.P., Mosimann, U.P. and Burn, D.J. (2013) ‘Visual exploration in Parkinson’s disease and Parkinson’s disease dementia’, Brain, 136(3), pp. 739-750. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awt005
As you don’t want to quote the section at length, you decide to paraphrase the section and give a reference. Here's your first attempt at paraphrasing the text:
The longer fixation duration is therefore a potential reflection not just of subcortical oculomotor deficits but may also serve to highlight the involvement of fronto-parietal eye fields and/or dorsal and ventral streams in the neurodegenerative process in Parkinson’s disease.
The longer fixation duration could therefore be a potential reflection not just of subcortical oculomotor deficits but also serve to highlight the involvement of fronto-parietal eye fields and/or dorsal and ventral streams in the neurodegenerative process in Parkinson’s disease.
Whilst some aspects of the original wording were changed, the overall structure of the extract remains very similar to the original and would be picked up by anti-plagiarism software. There's also no reference included. This is important, as even when you are putting things in your own words, the idea ‘belongs’ to the original author and you need to acknowledge this with a reference.
You decide to have another go at paraphrasing the extract:
The longer fixation duration is therefore a potential reflection not just of subcortical oculomotor deficits but may also serve to highlight the involvement of fronto-parietal eye fields and/or dorsal and ventral streams in the neurodegenerative process in Parkinson’s disease.
The prolonged fixation duration therefore could be a reflection of subcortical oculomotor deficits and could serve to highlight the role of fronto-parietal eye fields and dorsal and ventral streams in the neurodegenerative process in Parkinson’s disease (Archibald et al., 2013).
Whilst more changes have been made this time and some synonyms have been used, the structure of the original extract remains broadly the same. If you've also included other paraphrased sections from the same text, plagiarism software is likely to recognise the structure or sequence of the way the ideas are expressed as coming from the original text. It's important to completely express the ideas in your own terms and only include terminology from the original that would be difficult to express any other way. For instance, “subcortical oculomotor” and “fronto-parietal” can't really be expressed any other way.
You decide to have one more go, key terminology aside, to try to express the ideas in your own terms:
The longer fixation duration is therefore a potential reflection not just of subcortical oculomotor deficits but may also serve to highlight the involvement of fronto-parietal eye fields and/or dorsal and ventral streams in the neurodegenerative process in Parkinson’s disease.
Subcortical oculomotor deficits could be a result of both the longer fixation duration, the time the eyes linger on objects in a setting, and also suggest the impact made on the neurodegenerative process in Parkinson’s disease by fronto-parietal eye fields, as well as dorsal and ventral streams (Archibald et al., 2013).
Yes! Whilst some of the key terminology remains, the phrasing and the structure of this extract has been sufficiently amended and some clarification of ‘fixation duration’ has been included. This version would be unlikely to be highlighted by plagiarism software.
Note that although the student has written this using their own structure and wording, a reference is still required in order to acknowledge the author of the original text.
Getting started
Practice your paraphrasing using the three example passages provided in this activity.
Remember to use your own structure and wording, and always include a reference so that the reader knows the facts or ideas you are expressing belong to someone else.
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