Should references be excluded or included while checking plagiarism – and why?
Should References Be Excluded While Checking Plagiarism?
When running a document through plagiarism detection software, many researchers are unsure whether the reference list should be included or excluded. The correct approach is usually to exclude references during plagiarism checking. This is because references naturally match with many existing documents and can falsely inflate the similarity percentage.
1. What Happens If References Are Included?
If references are included in plagiarism checking:
- Journal names, titles, and author names will match many documents
- Standard citation formats (APA, IEEE, etc.) will appear as copied text
- The similarity percentage will increase unnecessarily
- The report may look worse than the actual originality of your work
These matches are not plagiarism because references are meant to be the same across many papers.
2. Why References Should Be Excluded
References should be excluded because:
- They do not represent your original writing
- They are expected to be similar across publications
- They are not part of the research content
- They distort the true similarity of your main text
Excluding references gives a more accurate originality score for your actual research writing.
3. What Do Universities and Journals Do?
Most universities and journals:
- Exclude the reference section from similarity calculation
- Exclude quotations and bibliographies
- Evaluate only the main content of the paper or thesis
Supervisors and examiners focus on whether your ideas and explanations are original, not whether your references match others.
4. When Should References Be Included?
In some cases, references may be included:
- When checking formatting correctness
- When verifying copied reference lists
- If the institution explicitly requires full document checking
However, even in these cases, references are usually manually excluded during interpretation.
5. Common Misunderstanding
“Including references gives a more honest plagiarism result.”
This is incorrect. Including references does not measure originality of content; it only measures similarity of citation text, which is unavoidable.
Conclusion
For plagiarism checking, references should generally be excluded because they naturally match existing documents and do not reflect plagiarism. Including them increases similarity percentage without indicating academic misconduct. Universities and journals therefore focus on similarity in the main body of the text, excluding references and quotations, to obtain a fair and accurate originality assessment.