Is There a Limit to Citing Sources When Trying to Avoid Plagiarism?

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Date: July 20, 2018

When talking about how much content can be taken from a source and cited, it needs to be clarified that only citing sources is not enough.

You cannot copy/paste all the stuff and mention references unless specifically asked by the instructor n case of literature review. Even in that case, an explanation of what you found out is more important rather than copy/pasting whatever you found out as a result of research.

On the other hand

You can do as much research and mention as many references as are needed to support your point of view. It might sound self-contradictory; however, the gist of the point made above is that there should be a reasonable percentage of explanation of your findings and your own thoughts about the topic.

The major point to be made here is that you should be adding value to your findings. Whatever you have reproduced should not only be reproduction without any value addition.

The instructors want to know your point of view. Research is suggested to get a direction of thought, and not to reproduce the content in your own words. If you are sure that you are adding value to the subject after doing all the research and are also mentioning in-text referencing, you should not worry about plagiarism.

In the end, if you are quoting

a specific reference so much so that it feels like one is reading the original writer throughout, it might be an issue for you. The content that you solely own should be more than what you are quoting. Hence, there definitely is a limit to citing sources when trying to avoid plagiarism.