This introductory workshop focuses on using new strategies and information technologies to assist faculty in preventing and detecting plagiarism. What are the common clues, and what can faculty do when we suspect plagiarism? We can search the Internet for suspect phrases, but there’s a lot more we can do as well. Combining strategies such as requiring specific research steps and working bibliographies with a wider range of detection tools than a simple web search can improve faculty ability to both prevent plagiarism and detect it more easily should it occur.
“Internet plagiarism is a growing
concern on all campuses as students struggle to understand what constitutes
acceptable use of the Internet. In the absence of clear direction from faculty,
most students have concluded that 'cut & paste' plagiarism - using a
sentence or two (or more) from different sources on the Internet and weaving
this information together into a paper without appropriate citation - is not a
serious issue. While 10% of students admitted to engaging in such behavior in
1999, this rose to 41% in a 2001 survey with the majority of students (68%)
suggesting this was not a serious issue”.
Center for Academic Integrity http://www.academicintegrity.org/cai_research.asp
Plattsburgh State University Policy
Academic Honesty and Cut & Paste Plagiarism
Tutorials and Teaching Resources
Plagiarism
Detection
Assignment
Strategies for Reducing Plagiarism
Citation Help and Citation Format Online Guides
General Information about Electronic Plagiarism
Sites Regarding Copyright, Especially for Educators
PN 167 Harris, Robert A., and Vic Lockman. The Plagiarism Handbook: Strategies for
.H37 Preventing, Detecting, and Dealing with Plagiarism. Los Angeles: Pyrczak, 2001.
2001 Website : www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm
"Academic honesty is essential to the intellectual health of the university and the ideals of education. SUNY Plattsburgh expects students to be honest and to conduct themselves with integrity in all aspects of their relationship with the college (e.g., application, transfer evaluation, academic progress review, and credit and non-credit bearing experiences, including regular course work, independent studies, internships, practica, student teaching, and interactions with faculty, staff, and students). Academic dishonesty adversely affects the educational function of the college and undermines the integrity of its programs.
Dishonest conduct includes, but is not limited to, cheating, plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, forgery, and alteration of records, along with any lying, deceit, bribery, coercion, or intimidation for the purpose of influencing a grade or for any other academic gain. Action against a student determined to have violated the academic honesty policy can range from a reduction of the grade on an assignment, through failure of a course, to suspension or even dismissal from the academic program, the department, or the college.
A student who is charged with academic dishonesty will be afforded due process through the College Judicial System. (See Procedures for Addressing Suspected Academic Dishonesty.)"
Plattsburgh State : Student Academic Honesty Policy
Combating
Plagiarism. by Brian Hansen, from the CQ Researcher, September 19, 2003,
provides an excellent and well documented report on plagiarism including recent
newsworthy cases, an historical timeline, and a pro/con essay on Turnitin.com. It's a PDF file, about 24 pages. Requires
institutional access.
Legal Aspects of
Academic Dishonesty by Dennis Bricault 1998, provides a summary
of legal issues and cases, a literature review, and the results of his research
at North Park University.
Plagiarism and Ethics by Holly Heller-Ross, a simplified one-page review of major western ethical theories and their application to the problem of plagiarism.
Plagiarism in Colleges in USA by attorney Ronald B. Standler 2000, provides a review of legal cases involving education law and plagiarism.
Why do students cheat? (NPR's "All Things Considered" report on cheating--RealPlayer needed) Students are able to copy and paste from Web sites and full-text articles and book chapters into word processed drafts of their papers. Many mistakenly think that all information on the Internet is free, and this makes it perfectly legal and acceptable to use it without attribution. In addition, citation formats for Web sites can be difficult. A thorough discussion of student motivation can be found at the "Academic Dishonesty" location on Wesleyan University Library's page on Turnitin. (See Turnitin.com below for URL.)
Some online information companies provide students, for a subscription fee, to search for their topics in virtual libraries owned by the providers. Look at Questia, for example. For $19.95 monthly a student can copy text and paste it into a paper and Questia will provide a bibliographic citation--in the selected correct format (e.g., APA, MLA). Some librarians teach how to copy and paste as part of the services their libraries offer; while they certainly address the question of attribution, students may remember more of the skills and less of the intellectual content of such workshops.
The library journal College & Research Libraries News (C&RL News) published an Internet resource guide by librarian Patience Simmonds in June of 2003 to Plagiarism and Cyber-Plagiarism with current links to plagiarism awareness sites, honor codes, detection tools, online seminars, and paper mills. C&RL News now maintains the resource guide on their web site.
Students are not skilled in paraphrasing and often need practice. Some online examples of paraphrasing for students include:
Should You Use the Words of Others or Your Own Words? Bill Badke, a librarian at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, gives easy to understand advice about paraphrasing.
Using Sources from Hamilton College. A text explanation with examples of poor paraphrases. (Author's permission to use, always citing Hamilton College as the source.)
Avoiding Plagiarism from Purdue University's Writing Lab. Attractively formatted for printing as a handout for students with examples and advice about paraphrasing. Please note the "Terms and Conditions of Fair Use" of this page.
Avoiding Plagiarism from DePauw University Writing Center. Another well formatted page with examples of proper and improper paraphrasing. (Author's permission received for this link.)
Exercise on Citation and Paraphrase from California Lutheran University. An exercise that shows students various ways to quote and paraphrase work. (Author's permission received for this link.)
Plagiarism
101 from SUNY Albany
Subtitled: How to write term papers without being sucked into the black hole.
A introductory
tutorial with information, "what would you do?" scenarios, and a
self-quiz.
Plagiarism
Tutorial from North Carolina State University
Developed by the NCSU Libraries' Scholarly Communication Center, this tutorial
covers definitions, rules and regulations.
Searchpath
Module 6: Citing Sources from Western Michigan University
This
module of the Searchpath information literacy tutorial includes interactive
exercises on citations and avoiding plagiarism. It also provides a quiz.
Straight Talk about
Plagiarism from Bedford/St. Martins
This two page handout in PDF format developed by publisher Bedford/St.Martins
can be distributed freely to students.
The Bedford/St. Martins Workshop on Plagiarism provides information on use of portfolios and reviews online detection tools.
Reference Sources and Circulating Books
Students may find ready-made essays, descriptions, and analysis
in paper library reference sources as well as in online sources. Faculty
familiarity with these sources will provide an intuitive sense of when checking
a reference source for possible plagiarized text would be useful. Library
Liaisons can help keep faculty up-to-date as new reference materials are added
to the library shelves. While no-one can be expected to memorize the content of
all the circulating books in their area, a quick library catalog search on a
topic could lead to possible sources of plagiarized or improperly cited
material.
Full-text Online Databases
Students use full-text research databases at an ever-increasing
rate. Journal articles and book chapters found in these databases are not
included in web search engine results, as they are part of the "invisible web".
Faculty familiarity with the journals in their disciplines that are part of the
library's full-text databases will make detecting plagiarism for these sources a
little easier. Feinberg subscribes to many full-text
databases, covering thousands of journals.
Students find pre-written academic papers by using search engines; almost any search engine will return information about papers to buy or download at no charge. A simple search under the topic of a paper, combined with a phrase such as "free papers" or "term paper" will retrieve numerous sites. Examples of some commonly used search engines include:
Google: Students can find papers using Google search. A recent search for term papers resulted in 110,000,000 sites! Ask.com and Yahoo!: provide the same types of links. A search under charlemagne +"term paper" resulted in 22,100 hits, some free paper sites, some fee-based paper sites, some assignment descriptions from course syllabi.
Faculty may use the same search engines and very similar techniques to scan for suspicious phrases. Meta-engines such as Meta-Crawler also may be used successfully for such searches.
Some institutions subscribe to commercial detection services. Individual faculty members also may subscribe to such services.
Turnitin.com - The first sentence on the
Home page for this service states that it is "the world's leading plagiarism
prevention system." Individual subscriptions are available. A Web page
created by Wesleyan University librarian Kendall Hobbs provides a good overview
of this service. See "Plagiarism
and Turnitin.com"
<http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/turnitin/>
Look at a sample
document
Glatt Plagiarism Screening Program - A service that will blank words on a submitted paper so that an instructor can ask the student to fill in the blanks. The company also offers a "computer-assisted" teaching program to help students learn to paraphrase. <http://www.plagiarism.com/screen.id.htm>
EduTie.com - Free Trial includes 10 free submissions
of student papers.
<http://www.edutie.com/> (Thanks to Jose de Ondarza for submitting this link.)
Plagiarism.org - Links to Turnitin.com
(above). Offers a free trial for 5 papers/reports (1 month limit). <http://www.plagiarism.org/>
(Thanks to Jose de Ondarza for submitting this link.)
EVE2 - Essay Verification
Engine, a downloadable program with free 15-day trial <http://www.canexus.com/eve/index.shtml>
(Thanks to Jose de Ondarza for submitting this link.)
Annotated Bibliography: Involves use of a stated number of sources. Describe each source--in three to five sentences only--as to its relevance and value to the topic. Include a source that was NOT helpful or would make it as a "runner-up."
 |
Do not require a laundry list of, for example, 3 journal articles, 1 Web site, and 2 books Not all topics are covered equally well in all information formats |
|
Require that all Web sites have identifiable authors, either persons or organizations/corporate bodies |
|
Make sure students know that a periodical article from a subscription full-text database is not considered a "Web site" |
Working Bibliographies: Requires submission of a working bibliographies weeks before the paper is due. The working bibliography must include more sources than would likely be needed for the paper, e.g., 10 items for a 5-page paper.
| Include notes indicating any materials have been requested through Interlibrary Loan |
| Annotate each item for only particular characteristics, e.g., timeliness or technicality |
| Use proper citation format |
Literature Review (or update an older literature review): Involves discovering how a topic evolves in your field.
|
Learn what a literature review is and its usefulness to scholars |
|
Use indexes (not only online) to locate reviews |
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Trace the evolution of a topic |
Segmented or Serial Reports: Require that students work on one topic throughout the semester with pieces of their research turned in periodically. An example is a complete study of homelessness that includes individual brief submissions such as: Basic Overview, including separate aspects that could be researched; Current Controversies/Areas of Interest; Historical Background of one aspect; Examples of Solutions, including both documented and speculative approaches.
|
Students may all use the same topic for such long term projects. |
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Topics and aspects will require use of different information sources. |
Personal Reflection: Require students to reflect on how the topics relate to their lives, academic goals, social situations/backgrounds.
(Some ideas in this section were suggested by Wesleyan University librarian Kendall Hobbs and the Web site on plagiarism at Lemoyne College )
More Ideas for Alternatives to Research Papers: See the Columbia Gorge Community College page on Alternatives to Term Papers This is an excellent source for ideas.
The Feinberg Library at Plattsburgh State posts information to help students with citation formats. Currently that information is available through a link, "Citing Sources," on the library web page.
Professional associations' formatting help:
| American Psychological Association--APA: http://www.apastyle.org/ |
| Modern Language Association--MLA: http://www.mla.org/ (Click on MLA Style) |
| Council of Science Editors--formerly CBE: http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/publications/style.cfm |
| Chicago Manual of Style (also "Turabian"): http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html |
| American Chemical Society--ACS: http://chemistry.org/portal/Chemistry?PID=acsdisplay.html&DOC=library%5Csciwriting.html |
| Bedford St Martins Links to Citation Guides --http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/citex.html |
There is a good collection of approximately 150 sites at the Web site, "Cheating 101: Paper Mills and You"
The text of the site reads: " Teaching Effectiveness
Seminar Coastal Carolina University, March 5, 1999
(Revised March 10, 2003)
Welcome to "Cheating 101: Paper Mills and You", this is an abbreviated version
of the presentation given by Margaret Fain and Peggy Bates as part of the
Teaching Effectiveness Seminars held at Coastal Carolina University. "
Crash Course in Copyright <www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/cprtindx.htm#top> University of Texas tutorial on copyright.
10 Big Myths about copyright explained <www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html> A straightforward approach to copyright by the Chairman of the Board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "the leading foundation protecting liberties and privacy in cyberspace."
Copyright Law: Using Information Legally <http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/copyright> Johns Hopkins University Q&A-links page on copyright.
Copyright and Fair Use in the Classroom, on the Internet, and on the World Wide Web from the Center for Intellectual Property and Copyright, University of Maryland University College <http://umuc.edu/library/copy.shtml> . Detail and basic definitions, including information for multimedia materials.
This page created by Carla List-Handley. C2000
Revised and Updated by Holly Heller-Ross, 2003 -
Last updated: 26 Jun 2007