Catching copy cats: with the wide number of anti-plagiarism tools available today, students looking to lift others' work don't stand much of a chance.THE FALL SEMESTER OPENED this year with unprecedented concern over the scope of plagiarism Using ideas, plots, text and other intellectual property developed by someone else while claiming it is your original work. in higher education higher education Study beyond the level of secondary education. Institutions of higher education include not only colleges and universities but also professional schools in such fields as law, theology, medicine, business, music, and art. . A virtual epidemic of cheating, or perhaps just a new awareness, has spread across the academic world. A web search for "plagiarism" reveals numerous articles published this past summer alone in the higher education press. Reports of book authors and journalists caught copying the works of others without attribution are also frequent. A common thread through these events is the idea that the web and internet make cheating easy. Yet many of these instances of plagiarism are detected by sharp-eyed users of the networks. Estimates of the frequency of plagiarism by students vary, with rates of 70 percent or more often asserted. The Center for Academic Integrity (www.academicintegrity.org) at Duke University (N.C.), for example, surveyed more than 50,000 students and found that 40 percent admitted using at least few unacknowledged borrowings in their papers. Most observers concede that plagiarism is not new but wonder really how widespread it has become. The temptation to cut and paste To move an object from one location to another. When the operation is complete, there is nothing left in the original location. It may refer to relocating files from one folder to another or to relocating selected text or images from one document to another. is undeniable; the vastness of the web and internet gives an illusion of safety from detection. Cheaters exhibit varying degrees of deception. Some, desperate in the face of deadlines or simply lazy, lift a few sentences, weaving them into their own writing. Or perhaps they appropriate whole passages from sources they think nobody else will find. But others make more deliberate efforts to cover their tracks, substituting synonyms or embroidering new sentences to alter copied paragraphs. PLAGIARISM-DETECTING TOOLS Commonly used web search engines A Web site that maintains an index and short summaries of billions of pages on the Web, Google being the world's largest. Most search engine sites are free and paid for by advertising banners, while others charge for the service. are an obvious and easily available means for trying to counter plagiarism. If casual or incautious in·cau·tious adj. Not cautious; rash. in·cau  tious·ly adv.in·cau copiers find materials in places discoverable by ordinary searching, then faculty should be able to trace suspicious wording by the same means. But a growing multitude of software packages and search services is springing up to offer help in detecting plagiarism. The University of Virginia website, for one, offers a free program called Wcopyfind that compares submitted flies to search for shared phrases. It searches files on local and locally networked drives but is not able to search the web or internet. The Essay Verification Engine, or EVE2, searches the web to find pages from which a writer might have plagiarized pla·gia·rize v. pla·gia·rized, pla·gia·riz·ing, pla·gia·riz·es v.tr. 1. To use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own. 2. and returns links to the suspected sites, high-lighting in red all the passages in the submitted paper that appear to have been copied from the detected sources. Compatible with Microsoft Word A full-featured word processing program for Windows and the Macintosh from Microsoft. Included in the Microsoft application suite, it is a sophisticated program with rudimentary desktop publishing capabilities that has become the most widely used word processing application on the market. , Cord Word Perfect, or plain text formats, EVE2 sells for $30, with no recurring fees. Plagiarism-Finder from Mediaphor Software AG, meanwhile, conducts web searches starting from texts in several formats, including Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) The de facto standard for document publishing from Adobe. On the Web, there are countless brochures, data sheets, white papers and technical manuals in the PDF format. . The publisher suggests that authors and journalists could also use the program to check whether their texts are being plagiarized on the web. Plagiarism-Finder costs $125 and is available for a free 30-day trial. A different approach is taken by the Glatt Glatt may refer to:
n. The measured duration of an event. Noun 1. elapsed time - the time that elapses while some event is occurring while the author of that paper is challenged to fill in the blanks correctly. The software is based on a principle that every writer has a unique style and will be highly successful at remembering written passages, even those with missing words. The Glatt Plagiarism Screening Program sells for $250. Considered by many to be the leading anti-plagiarism product, Turnitin searches the web and some proprietary databases and a collection of already-submitted papers. A product of iParadigms, Turnitin creates what the company terms a "fingerprint" of a submitted paper, which it then compares to its three sources of information. Patterns, distributions, and profiles of language use are computed statistically and combined to yield ratings of probability of plagiarism. Additionally, each paper submitted for testing is added to the company's database, augmenting the stock of existing papers available for each new search. Turnitin is available for campus licenses, with pricing based on institutional enrollment. Within the past month, iParadigms has teamed with LexisNexis to offer a new service called CopyGuard. It searches more than six billion documents within the LexisNexis collection, using pattern-matching techniques to identify possible sources for submitted texts. While the service was not designed specifically with higher ed use in mind, it could certainly be used at schools. Software programs and online services vary in their claims of certainty about identification of plagiarism. Some herald the end of stolen texts, while others are careful to say they report degrees of probability. But all represent themselves as tools of detection and offer themselves as specialized means to combat the epidemic of plagiarism. PREVENTIVE ACTIONS Many institutions of higher education have established websites to promote student awareness of the dangers of plagiarism and ways to avoid the practice. The Student Judicial Affairs Office of the University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis, commonly known as UC Davis, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, and was established as the University Farm in 1905. has a web page entitled "Avoiding Plagiarism: Mastering the Art of Scholarship" (sja.ucdavis.edu/avoid.htm). It gives guidelines on how to cite sources, as well as guidelines--with examples--for avoiding inadvertent plagiarism. The site recommends Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference A Writer's Reference is an EP from Halifax, released on 27 January 2004 on No Milk Records. It was re-released on 25 January 2005 on No Milk and Drive-Thru Records, featuring a bonus track, thoroughly revised artwork and an enhanced CD portion with a video interview and the (St. Martin's St. Martin's or St. Martins may refer to:
A comparable web resource at Indiana University Indiana University, main campus at Bloomington; state supported; coeducational; chartered 1820 as a seminary, opened 1824. It became a college in 1828 and a university in 1838. The medical center (run jointly with Purdue Univ. , "Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It" (www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml) illustrates acceptable and unacceptable paraphrases and advises on strategy and mechanics to avoid plagiarism. The Writing Center of Claremont McKenna College A member of the Claremont Colleges, Claremont McKenna College is a small, highly selective, private coeducational, liberal arts college enrolling about 1100 students with a curricular emphasis on government, economics, and public policy. (Calif.) has published a study of software designed to teach students about the dangers of plagiarism (writing.claremontmckenna.edu/plagiarism.asp). Students were surveyed on their assessments of the effectiveness of six software tools. Their findings were that while some of the tested products rated better than others, none were better than "marginally acceptable." A web page at the University of Michigan (body, education) University of Michigan - A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. gives instructors background and pedagogical ped·a·gog·ic also ped·a·gog·i·cal adj. 1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of pedagogy. 2. Characterized by pedantic formality: a haughty, pedagogic manner. advice for preventing plagiarism in their assignments and cheating on tests (www.lib.umich.edu/acadintegrity/instructors). Various articles and letters from faculty seek to explain why students plagiarize pla·gia·rize v. pla·gia·rized, pla·gia·riz·ing, pla·gia·riz·es v.tr. 1. To use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own. 2. and what faculty can do to lessen the likelihood that work they assign will result in infractions. General awareness-raising is widely suggested as a counter to the lure of improper copying. The most frequently suggested ways to discourage plagiarism through pedagogical adjustments are for faculty to: give unique assignments (topics not likely to be represented in the universe of papers offered for sale); assign some specific sources students must use; and require students to submit outlines, project plans, or drafts in advance of the final product. Faculty are also commonly urged to be alert for anomalies in style, format, diction, and voice in student papers--as those might be signs that passages have been plagiarized. While no one is able to say with certainty whether plagiarism is more rampant than in the past or just more detectable now, scholarship and publication are undergoing a crisis of credibility. Students are not alone in being implicated im·pli·cate tr.v. im·pli·cat·ed, im·pli·cat·ing, im·pli·cates 1. To involve or connect intimately or incriminatingly: evidence that implicates others in the plot. 2. in improper appropriation of the work of others: Journalists and scholars have been tainted taint v. taint·ed, taint·ing, taints v.tr. 1. To affect with or as if with a disease. 2. To affect with decay or putrefaction; spoil. See Synonyms at contaminate. 3. also (see End Note, page 80). To some extent, faculty and editors have had to scramble to become familiar with the means for testing suspicious passages as students and writers have gotten ahead of them. A new market for aids to search out evidence of plagiarism is developing. These tools just might join the array of reference resources that shape the conduct of scholarship and policing of intellectual property. Resources CopyGuard, www.lexisnexis.com/copyguard EVE2, www.canexus.com Glatt Plagiarism Screening Program, www.plagiarism.com Mediaphor Software AG, www.m4-software.com Turnitin, www.turnitin.com Wcopyfind, plagiarism.phys.Virginia.edu Tom Warger is a consulting principal for Edutech International (www.edutech-int.com). |
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