Article for Teachers
Cut and Paste Plagiarism
Preventing,
Detecting and Tracking Online Plagiarism
Lisa
Hinchliffe janicke@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
May 1998
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.
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Types
of plagiarism:
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Buying
a paper for a research service or term paper mill.
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Turning
in another studentīs work without that student?s knowledge.
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Turning
in a paper a peer has written for the student.
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Copying
a paper from a source text without proper acknowledgment.
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Copying
materials from a source text, supplying proper documentation, but leaving
out quotation marks.
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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?
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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.
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Require
students to engage and apply ideas, not just describe them.
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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.
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Discuss
plagiarism with students, both what it is and your policies about it.
How
Can I Detect Plagiarism?
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Check
for unusual formatting or formatting that does not match what you require.
In particular, check for website printout page numbers or dates, grayed
out letters and unusual use of upper/lower case and capitalization.
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Notice
any jargon or advanced vocabulary or sentence structure.
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Read
quotations carefully. Do they sound like a quote from an interview? Are
there quotes without bibliographic entries?
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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?
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Review
the bibliography. Is the correct citation style used? Is the citation
style used consistently? Does it match the sources referenced in the
paper? Are there many items that the academic institution's library does
not have?
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.
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Check
for original source identification clues. Follow up with a web search for
the original source.
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Identify
unusual keywords or unique phrases and search them in one of the large
search engines such as HotBot or Infoseek.
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Look
at original text of sources listed in the bibliography.
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Browse
the websites listed in Yahoo! - Business and
Economy:Companies:Education:Term Paper Assistance
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Ask
a reference librarian for assistance.