Abstract:

As the quality of scientific papers and antiplagiarism policy require developing of detecting strategies and tools, our study deals with criteria elaborated for checking linguistics researches presented as the final project for a bachelor’s or master’s degree in Ukraine. The objectives of the research are to determine what part of the thesis should be considered to be original in linguistics research where citation is an important part demonstrating the context in which a language unit is used as well as determining peculiarities of applying the Unicheck international platform to Ukrainian linguistics investigations that are to correspond to Ukrainian law regulations and the University Practical Guide for Writing Bachelor’s and Master’s Theses in Linguistics in order to improve plagiarism detection and paper assessment methods.

The research methodology is based on analyzing Unicheck reports on plagiarism and revising 66 bachelor’s and master’s degree theses (5000 pages) in order to determine the necessity of citation detected by the Unicheck system as plagiarism. The papers were written by students of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and, having passed plagiarism check, they were revised by scientific supervisors before being allowed to public defense. Revision results were considered to be an integral part of the final mark. While giving the recommendations for the public defense and further assessment, experts need take into account particular criteria which were elaborated to find a balance between points in Unicheck reports and assessment of researcher’s personal impact in the linguistics thesis. Therefore, paper scientific novelty and evidence base, research correspondence to the methodological recommendations on writing degree qualification thesis and differences into Ukrainian and international requirements to technical appearance of scientific papers were analyzed.

The paper argues that in linguistics researches more citations of practical material which can clarify shifts in the semantic, pragmatic or connotation meaning of language units should be allowed, because linguistics context serves as its evidence. Meanwhile other scientists’ citation should be limited to 20% of the text, which is enough for describing the study framework. Despite some inconsistences of the Unicheck platform functions to the Ukrainian requirements of thesis technical presentation, it turned out to be one of the most efficient tools for checking scientific papers originality and their comparison with researches all over the world. Antiplagiarism platforms usage contributes greatly to improving quality in both educational and investigation fields at national and international levels.

Keywords:

Antiplagiarism, quality assessment, linguistics research, language unit, context, thesis technical presentation, international level.