Articles on Plagiarism Detection
- Plagiarized.com site includes Prevention Guidelines for Parents and for Instructors and a section on "dead giveaways," such as being way off topic, using strange lay-out, citing books not held in your campus library, and referring to a lecture by a "mystery instructor" -- probably someone who teaches at another institution.
- "Student Plagiarism in an Online World," by Julie J.C.H. Ryan, ASEE Prism (Amer. Soc. for Engineering Education), December, 1998. Has detailed examples of student plagiarism and advises to watch for context change, missing footnotes, and false references.
- Can Tech Detect College Cheaters? by Margaret Kane, ZDNet News, April 5, 2002. Includes discussion of detection companies beginning to market to publishers to check manuscripts and to universities to check grant-funded research.
Examples of Commercial Detectors
- Use one or more good search engines, such as Google and enter unique phrases from the term paper in question.
- Eve
Checks submitted paper against the Web. Search can be set by the user to "quick," "medium," or "extra strength." Software $29.99; for one instructor; institutional site licenses also available. - Turnitin.com (formerly Plagiarism.org)
Papers are run against company's database and "finger-printed" for identification in the future; instructor gets a report analyzing the overall similarity to and use of exact phrases in common with papers in the database. $1/paper submitted. For a recent article on Turnitin and Turnitin's founder see, "Anti-Cheating Crusader Vexes Some Professors: Software kingpin syas using his product would cure plagiarism blight," by Brock Read, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 29, 2008. Included is a comparison table headed "Plagiarism's Private Eyes" of Turnitin, SafeAssign, and PAIRwise. - CopyCatch is a U.K. based product that compares whole documents rather than keywords or phrases.
- SafeAssign. Originally MYDROPBOX, now owned by Blackboard and free to campuses using Blackboard course management software, compares the text of submitted papers to the Internet, previously submitted papers at that institution and Proquest database content.
- PAIRwise (Paper Authorship Integrity Research) Open source plagiarism detection software developed at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
- Plagiarism.com (Glatt Plagiarism Screening Program)
Eliminates every fifth word in student paper; student re-supplies; error rate and time used to arrive at likelihood plagiarism occurred. - NOTE: There is also free perl software called "Anti-Anti Plagiarism" that may defeat anti-plagiarism software by taking "a text file as input, and produc[ing] an output with the same English meaning, but as many textual changes as possible, while maintaining grammer and spelling."
Research on Detectors
- Colorado College research, conducted by Satterwhite and Gerein (2001), included comparisons among the detectors.
- Detection Tools and Methods. An online guide to the tools and decisionmaking process when considering them, from the Virtual Academic Integrity Laboratory (VAIL), University of Maryland University College.
- "Online plagiarism detection services—saviour or scourge?" by Lucy McKeever, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, v. 31, no. 2 (April 2006): 155-165 (available in Academic Search). "It argues that if online detection is used in conjunction with the many valuable ‘anti-plagiarism’ resources and tutorials available on the web, it really can become a positive teaching aid for staff and students alike, rather than a threatening online policing system" (author-supplied abstract).
- "Plagiarism software: no magic bullet!" by James Warn, Higher Education Research & Development, v. 25, n 2 (May 2006): 195-208 (available in Academic Search). Warn predicts that students will resort to more paraphrasing."The paper concludes with suggestions for developing a coordinated institutional policy on plagiarism, and recommends that policy encompass training and educational initiatives to complement any enforcement strategy using plagiarism software" (author-supplied abstract).
- "Systems for the Production of Plagiarists? The Implications Arising from the Use of Plagiarism Detection Systems in UK Universities for Asian Learners," by Niall Hayes and Lucas Introna, Journal of Academic Ethics v. 3, no. 1 (March 2005): 55-73. Fears that "legitimate attempts [by newcomers to the 'community of practice'] to conform with the expectations of the community of practice often become identified as plagiarism and illegitimate attempts at cheating often become obscured from view."
- Detecting Plagiarism consists of "Using Google.com to Detect Internet Plagiarism" and "Tracking Down Plagiarism from Library Full-text Article Databases," short tutorials in how to do a phrase search. It is by Miao Hong, Marywood University Library, 2002.
Legality of Using Detectors: Copyright Issue?
- "Plagiarism-Detection Tool Creates Legal Quandary," by Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 17, 2002, and follow-up letter to the editor, from Teri Delos Santos, June 21, 2002. Foster article discusses whether Turnitin and other companies that store student papers submitted for checking might be infringing on the students' copyright. Letter disagrees, saying when a match is found, the original writer has to give permission before the paper can be viewed.
- "Student Who Sued Operator of Term-Paper Sites Settles Her Case Out of Court," by Andrea L. Foster. Today's News, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 11, 2006. The student argued that the Term Paper Sites "infringed on her copyright, invaded her privacy, and damaged her reputation when they made her paper on South Africa accessible to subscribers.
- "McLean Students Sue Anti-Cheating Service: Plaintiffs Say Company's Database of Term Papers, Essays Violates Copyright Laws," by Aria Glod, The Washington Post, March 29, 2007; but "Judge Issues Order Indicating that Plaintiffs' Copyright Infringement Claims Against iParadigms Will be Dismissed," PR Newswire February 12, 2008. (iParadigms is the parent company of Turnitin).