How to Handle Plagiarism in an Edit

If a document is obviously fully or mostly plagiarized, please flag it for review by Kibin administrators. If possible, please include a link to the original site/document from which the submission was plagiarized. 

If a document is partially plagiarized, please highlight the plagiarized text and offer the author this comment: “Please cite your source or paraphrase to avoid plagiarism.” You might also link to some resources on paraphrasing or citing to help the user avoid plagiarism in their next draft. How to Paraphrase Anything (The Right Way) is a good post from the Kibin blog. 

If you suspect a document is partially plagiarized because of strange shifts in voice, please edit the document as normal. It's important to remember that we do edit papers with multiple authors sometimes, and shifts in voice are not always an indicator of plagiarism. Most of the time, the author who submitted the doc will let you know this is the case because they're using our help to sound like one voice. If that's not the case, however, you might leave a closing comment advising the author to check for possible plagiarism and cite sources due to the shifts in voice. It's also helpful to point out the shifts in the text for the author. 

Not sure what to say? You can copy/paste this response:

I noticed there were some parts in your essay that sounded like you might have found information from other sources, but they were not properly cited. I’ve highlighted these areas with comments. I suggest you run your document through a free plagiarism checker like http://plagiarisma.net/ to pinpoint other problem areas. Remember, it’s okay to use other writers' information, but you need to be sure to cite your sources because plagiarism (even if you didn’t mean to do it) is a very serious issue. Learn more about citing sources here: [Link to citation resource for their selected style guide]