One of the most common causes of intentional or unintentional academic dishonesty stems from panic that occurs because of poor time management. Writing academic papers requires time for thinking, collecting results, analysing and writing. If you have enough time, you’ll also be able to refer to your professors and assistants for help in case you need it. Self-discipline and managing your time are necessary for a successful completion of work. Make a short term and long term schedule with realistic, various and flexible goals for different stages of work in order to avoid stress. And don’t forget to reward yourself for successfully completed stages of work!

Make neat notes in units while reading literature and writing the paper. While reading literature it is important to separate what you directly copied from what is your critical opinion of the text to avoid unintentional plagiarism. One of the ways is to write notes in two columns- one for quotes and the other for your comments- or using a special pen colour or text colour for direct quotes so they are distinct from the rest of the text for example “write quotes in red”!!

While writing an academic text it can be useful to write a diary for the writing process and research work.