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In my previous question I asked about being accused of plagiarism.

Finally, the examiners have sent me the pages where I have not put the sources. These are 8 pages in total where I accidentally forget to cite due to some family stress and lack of knowledge about plagiarism .

As far as I remember I have put some pages in my thesis for reading purpose and forget to remove it from there due to my own carelessness.

What should I write in my answering statement to retain my degree?

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    It's not clear to me what you're saying you did. Do you have 8 pages that you copied from another source? Or are there 8 pages where you are missing all citations? Or are there 8 pages where you missed an occasional citation?
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented Mar 26, 2023 at 22:37
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    If I were on the student integrity committee considering this case, I would not have found this explanation plausible. But it is between you and your university.
    – Moishe Kohan
    Commented Mar 26, 2023 at 23:42
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    You submitted your thesis and didn't realize that 8 of the pages weren't your own? I don't think there is any reasonable way to explain that.
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented Mar 27, 2023 at 0:11
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    "I forget to cite it" "forget to remove it" If you wanted to remove it, then why would you need to cite it? These two statements seem contradictory; it seems that one or both of them are false.
    – JRN
    Commented Mar 27, 2023 at 1:40
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    "That is the main point. I put these pages as for my own reading" This is not something that anyone normally does (copy-pasting several pages from some other source into their thesis instead of, I dunno, printing them out or saving them into a separate file) and it's unclear why you would do this, so you'd need to come up with a very convincing explanation for this. (I cannot think of any myself.) Especially if you happen to have had such bad luck that the pages that you put there for your own reading happen to have landed into contexts where they fit in seemlessly with the rest of the text.
    – Adam Přenosil
    Commented Mar 27, 2023 at 9:11

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I'm not sure what you mean by "Lack of knowledge about the plagiarism" but if you only mean that you mistakenly left it in rather than that you don't understand plagiarism, then you could say that.

You could also mention your stress based on family issues. I note that you haven't mentioned stress before, nor its nature. I don't suggest you add it here, but you might need to in your letter.

But, I suggest that you be honest in all things. Describe your process and how it failed. Offer to make suitable corrections.

I can't guarantee anything about the outcome. Hopefully you will be able to have a meeting. Answer honestly. Carelessness is bad but better than evil intent. Carelessness amplified by stress might get you forgiveness. Good luck.

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