1. Make sure the report is filtered correctly
Ask (or check) whether the bibliography, quoted material and small matches were excluded. Under the UGC 2018 regulations, references, properly quoted text, the table of contents, acknowledgements and standard terms are excluded from the similarity index. An unfiltered report can easily double the real figure.
2. Read the sources, not just the number
- One giant match usually means a previous submission of the same file (yours or someone else's), a shared template, or a published version of your own paper.
- Dozens of small matches usually mean patchwriting: sentences lightly edited from sources rather than written from your own understanding.
- Matches to your own published work are self-plagiarism unless cited and permitted. See our guide on self-plagiarism in a PhD thesis.
3. Fix the writing properly
- Quote verbatim text with quotation marks and a citation, and keep quotes short.
- For each borrowed idea, close the source, explain the point in your own words, then cite it.
- Replace long background sections copied from textbooks with a concise synthesis that connects to your research question.
- Do not use synonym-swapping or AI paraphrasing tools: the result reads badly, keeps the source's structure, and AI paraphrasing is itself detectable.
4. Re-check and talk to your supervisor
Run a fresh report on the revised draft and share it with your supervisor with a short note on what you changed. Supervisors respond far better to a student who caught the problem early than to one who hopes it goes unnoticed.
We provide pre-submission similarity reports, source-by-source explanations and editing of your own draft for quotation and citation errors. We do not rewrite work to disguise copying.
More: what a 45% score means · similarity FAQ
This guide is general information. Always follow your own university's current regulations and your supervisor's advice.