No official number exists for words that can be used before it can be classified as plagiarism. Although the famous five word rule holds that if five consecutive words are similar to somebody else writing is seen as plagiarism. Sometimes an individual might have the same though which are identical with someone else. Expressing such though in writing that is similar to someone else is plagiarism.
However, Federal research misconduct policies do not in any way addresses the famous five rules, instead it defines research misconduct as falsification, fabrication, plagiarism or other practices that are not in line or differ with acceptable norms in the scientific community for proposing, conducting or reporting research.
Fabrication is when an individual intentionally make up a result or data and reporting them.
Falsification is when an individual changes research materials, data or alters or omits information’s so that the record presented in the research does not accurately represent the findings in the research.
Plagiarism is when an individual use somebody else’s idea, results or words without giving credits to the original owner.
Simply put, the federal research misconduct does not determine plagiarism based on the maximum number of words but discourages individual from copying or using other people’s idea without appropriate credits.
There is not an official number but there is the famous Five Word Rule. It states that if 5 consecutive words are used as someone else wrote them then it can be considered to be plagiarism even though you might not have wanted to plagiarize and genuinely had the same thought.
