CUT-AND-PASTE PLAGIARISM:  PREVENTING, DETECTING AND TRACKING ONLINE PLAGIARISM

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Reference Librarian, Parkland College Library

Reprinted with permission from: http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/`janicke/plagiary.htm.

 (Thanks to Myfanwy Truscott of Campion College Library for forwarding this to the TDC)

 

 

WHAT IS PLAGIARISM?

Plagiarism is a difficult concept to define.  It includes a range of actions from failure to use proper citation to wholesale cheating.  A student who plagiarizes may do so unintentionally or with planful deliberation.

In “Helping Student Avoid Plagiarism”, Stephen Wilhoit lists the following types of plagiarism:

¨       Buying a paper for a research service or term paper mill.

¨       Turning in another student’s work without that student’s knowledge.

¨       Turning in a paper a peer has written for the student.

¨       Copying a paper from a source text without proper acknowledgement.

¨       Copying materials from a source text, supplying proper documentation, but leaving out quotation marks.

¨       Paraphrasing materials from a source text without appropriate documentation.

¨       The Internet has made simple an additional type of plagiarism:  “Turning in a paper from a “free term paper” website.

 

HOW CAN I PREVENT PLAGIARISM?

            Emphasize the processes involved in doing research and writing papers.  Ways to do so include requiring topic proposals, idea outlines, multiple drafts, interim working bibliographies and photocopies of sources.

            Require students to reflect personally on the topic or the processes of research and writing, either in the paper or as an additional writing assignment.

            Discuss plagiarism with students, both what it is and your policies about it.

 

HOW CAN I DETECT PLAGIARISM?

            Check for unusual formatting or formatting that does not match what your require.  In particular, check for website printout page numbers or dates, grayed out letters and unusual use of upper/lower case and capitalization.

            Notice any jargon or advanced vocabulary or sentence structure.

 

 

            Read quotations carefully.  Do they sound like a quote from an interview?  Are there quotes without bibliographic entries?

            Reference the original assignment.  Are any portions of the assignment completely left out?  Do any portions read like they were “added on” to the paper?  Is it the correct type of paper, e.g. descriptive, position, first person, narrative?

            Review the bibliography.  Is the correct citation style used?  Is the citation style used consistently?  Does it match the sources referenced in the paper?

 

HOW CAN I TRACK DOWN PLAGIARISM?

            Check for original author identification clues.  Follow up with a web search for a personal homepage and the website(s) of the organization(s) with which the author is affiliated.

            Check for original source identification clues.  Follow up with a web search for the original source.

            Identify unusual keywords or unique phrases and search them in one of the large search engines such as HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com) or Infoseek (http://www.infoseek.com).

            Look at original text of sources listed in the bibliography.

Browse websites listed in Yahoo! – Business and Economy: Companies :Education:Term Paper Assistance (http://www.yahoo.com).

Ask a reference librarian for assistance.