Tuesday 1 December 2015

citations - I have found theses on a similar subject to my own, and want to use their references with my own text and a similar flow. Is this plagiarism?



I'm writing my master thesis and found some master and PhD theses with the similar subject. They have lots of useful references at their introduction chapter, and I use those references and create my own text with a similar thought flow, would this be considered plagiarism?



Answer



You can do this:


"ThesesAuthorA [ref to their work] anaylsed the works of Bob [ref] , Jane [ref] , and Alice [ref] using some_method and found that their_conclusion. However the evidence can also be interpreted to show your_conclusion.


or this


"ThesesAuthorA [ref to their work] states 'direct quote of the thesis' in their analysis of Bob [ref] , Jane [ref] , and Alice [ref]. "


Either way you need to make it obvious that the conclusions are drawn from someone else's work, and that the references are only those required to support the points and arguments that you are making.


As @ff524 said this is your theses for your research project, so you are going to have to find, evaluate, discuss and defend your sources.


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