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Weyerhaeuser 215
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Detecting and Preventing Plagiarism in the Internet Age
To: All Macalester College Faculty From: David Chioni Moore, International Studies Program Date: August 26, 2001 Re: Detecting and Preventing Plagiarism in the Internet Age
What follows is a brief note to Macalester faculty on plagiarism in the Internet age: what it is, how to detect it, and how to prevent it. I write because last May I encountered seven cases of plagiarism by five different students. Three cases were in my classes; the other four were in colleagues'. Thus I sense that plagiarism is far more widespread than most faculty believe, due in part to the easy features of the Internet. The Varieties of Today's Plagiarism: Contemporary plagiarism is multiform. To be sure, the most detectable type still exists: unattributed student borrowing of professional writing. Professional writing is available both in traditional print and very widely on the Internet. However, the Internet also affords easy access to nonprofessional student-written texts, on both commercial and non-commercial websites. In two cases this spring, for example, I found that students had taken papers from websites at other colleges where faculty were showcasing excellent student work. The widespread sharing of files, diskettes, and public computers among our students and from college to college provides a third, more personal transmission means. In all three types (plagiarism of professional writing, of web-located student writing, and of writing by student friends), the plagiarized material can range from a few sentences to the entire paper. How to Recognize Plagiarism as Such: When students plagiarize professional writing, typically an abrupt change in style marks the material. The vocabulary and syntax almost glow on the page. The instructor sees that the style has shifted and far exceeds that student's capacity. Since papers that borrow from pro-fessional sources are often hastily composed, the gap may be that much larger. Plagiarized-from-students material is tougher to detect, since stylistic divergence is far less. Indeed, perusal of for-profit paper websites reveals much "bad college writing" wholly un-detectable on competence grounds. Thus many faculty may be grading non-original material without suspicion. Still, however, some tipoffs may be seen. One is a change (though not necessarily an improvement) on an earlier style, since average college writing varies widely. However, if a student borrows from the same source twice, no change will be evident. Likewise, if a student plagiarizes her first paper and actually writes her second, the instructor may falsely hear an alarm only on the second. In addition, it can be difficult to recall a specific student style from a long-ago graded paper. Somewhat easier to detect, within student-plagiarized work, is the "off-target" paper. Say for example that you assign a paper on gender in Faulkner's Light in August. Instead you get a paper which treats Faulkner and gender, but across several different novels, or compared to Hemingway, or which tackles authors, critics and/or theories not discussed in class. These "off-target" tics can signal non-original work. One paper I examined this spring began with vague words about the class, then took a wholly different tack for seven pages, and concluded by returning to more verbiage about the class. Adding to the puzzlement was that of the eight books in the bibliography, inexplicably six of them were not in the CLIC-net catalog, and a seventh was cited in a British edition different from the American edition owned by Mac. These and other "off target" signs can tip you off. Lastly, sometimes one suspects a plagiarized paper for no reason beyond "general feel." Still, I sense that more plagiarism occurs at Macalester than is detected by this feel. How to Find the Source of Suspected Plagiarized Material: Discovering the source of suspected plagiarized material ranges from easy to impossible. Of the seven cases I encountered this past spring, three were easy to discover, three were moderate, and the last could not be confirmed. In one easy case the student copied from another student in the class: 80% of two papers turned in overlapped exactly! It then remained to deter-mine who was the author and who was the copier, and/or if there was a common third source for both. In the second easy case, the student wholesale copied from a printed source found readily in the library. In the third easy case, an "exact phrase match" search on the search engine Google.com (discussed below) revealed the Internet source in two seconds. The remarkable thing about this third case, however, was the ultimate scope of the plagiarism. The paper in question was a personal-confessional, clearly "studenty" paper. One un-footnoted passage in it, however, was gifted scholarly writing. An exact-phrase match search on Google offered eight web locations for this distinctive passage. Amazingly, the first of these locations offered not just the scholarly passage, but virtually the entire student paper. The student had wholesale taken from a long student paper posted by a proud department at another institution. Where the original paper had correctly referenced the scholarly passage, however, the copying Mac student removed the origi-nal's citation. In other words, had our student more faithfully copied the original student paper, complete with the scholarly reference, I would have congratulated him/her on excellent research, unaware that the "personal" bulk of the paper was not his/hers. Thus some-times one uncovers plagiarism by chance. Following are five specific ways to track down sources of suspect material. Discovery method one: the library, and the e-library When seeking the source of suspect material, your first stop might be the library. If you think you can obtain the material quickly there (for example, if you recognize it as a printed source), do get it in the "traditional" way. Think about how the student would have found information on the subject in question, and follow that path. In addition, our library subscribes to many full-text services such as JStor, Expanded Academic ASAP, and Lexis/Nexis which students often use for research. Thus our library (and hence our reference librarians) can provide access to the "hidden" web not available with regular Internet search engines. Consultation with library staff is highly recommended when these sources may have been used. Discovery method two: the Internet, via search engines Our students, though, are more likely to borrow material from the open Internet than from the print or even the e-library. The Internet is far quicker; offers far more text; allows easy cut-and-paste into the student's own word-processor; is available at 3:00 am; and is typically far more familiar than the library. Thus a web-search is the best first stop to track down suspect material, especially student-style material. First, go to a good search engine. I find Google.com to be the best. Choose a distinc-tive suspect phrase of 5-10 words from the paper (enough words to be more or less unique), and type that phrase "in quotes" in the fill-in box. When you put a phrase in quotes, Google returns only exact matches for the phrase. If you input words not surrounded by quotes, Google finds web-pages with all or most of the input words somewhere on it, ranked by the closest to exact. Try several suspect phrases from several different portions of the paper. If a Google exact phrase match does not work, try an inexact phrase match (that is, with no "quotes" around the phrase). If that does not work, look to the "advanced search" facil-ity on the search engine, or try another engine. Other good search engines include WebCrawler, MetaCrawler, SearchEngineColossus, GoTo, 37, MiningCo, HotBot, Lycos, Yahoo and AltaVista. Each has different characteristics. Tinker and see what you can find. Discovery method three: the Internet, via commercial paper sites Beyond the public search engines (and the pages and further links they lead to), you might look to some of the commercial websites. The paper-mill website world is scary. A glance at SchoolSucks, Cheater, EvilCheater, DontCopy, 12000Papers, RealPapers, GeniusPapers, AcademicTermPapers, and so forth dot-com will clarify the picture. There are dozens of these websites, the largest of which offer thousands of papers on a huge array of subjects. For example, EssaySite.com lists fifty-five papers treating the contemporary Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe alone! The papers deal with several of his novels, many of his characters (both famous and obscure), Achebe and Africa, Achebe and history, Achebe and other African writers, and James Joyce, and Molière and Burke, and Sophocles, and feminist theory, and intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, the nation-state, and many more. EssaySite's Achebe-themed papers range from 3 to 15 pages, and from unfootnoted to fully researched. Once at one of the popular paper sites (I cannot rank them), type the theme of the suspect paper on their internal topic finder. From this you'll get short descriptions of relevant papers, and you may find the paper your student turned in. You won't be able to see the whole paper, only a synopsis, since the websites make money by selling the full texts. Costs range from $5 to $10 per page, with several cheater websites offering $3-5 per page surcharges for translations into bad student German, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian. I have not personally found a plagiarized paper in this way, since the sites are so many, full-text searches within them are impossible, and one can only see a synopsis of each paper. But in principle one can track down some plagiarized work in this way. I am not sure what one would do upon identifying a likely commercial paper, short of buying it an expensive option, and a waste if one is wrong. Discovery method four: the Internet, via TurnItIn.com TurnItIn.com is a website for teachers who suspect plagiarism exists. Turnitin works in the following way. Faculty who sign up for the service require their students both to turn in print copies of their papers and to electronically submit their papers to Turnitin. Turnitin then electronically examines each paper, and emails a report to the professor, rating the degree of resemblance of each paper to any other paper in its database or freely available on the net. Turnitin thus depends on the participation of many faculty nationwide, and in its ideal can even catch commercial papers the second time they are submitted, since then they'll get a match. Typically, whole institutions subscribe to Turnitin, for use at faculty discretion. At present, Macalester has a trial subscription which allows for a small number of single-paper checks. Of the three papers I checked on in this way, one gave me the original source (thus catching the student) when my own searches did not. It was quick and relatively easy to use. Faculty interested in Turnitin for either whole-class or single-suspect purposes should go to Turnitin's website, and if still interested should contact David Sisk (sisk@macalester.edu) for more details. If faculty interest is strong, we may upgrade our connection, though that entails certain costs and issues. Discovery method five: a conversation with the student If initial library or online research does not work, one should speak directly with the student. Indeed, many faculty may try this approach first. Different faculty will handle a conversation differently. Some may wish to discuss the paper's ideas, with which the student may be unfamiliar. Others may present some of the advanced vocabulary and ask for definitions. Or discuss the provenance of impressive cited sources. Others may confront suspicions directly. In some few cases (and at times with non-U.S. students), students might be unaware of what constitutes plagiarism in the first place. Though this information is in the student hand-book, and though students are responsible for having read it, not all have done so. You should not assume that another instructor has covered plagiarism in a previous class if you yourself are not in that habit. A conversation with a student may either a) convince you of innocence, b) result in admission, c) be inconclusive, or d) offer an opportunity for a lesson on citation standards. If You Confirm Plagiarism: What to Do If you confirm plagiarism, keep a written record of time of submission, nature of suspicions, nature and results of your search, and any conversations with the student. Also, photocopy the paper in question. Indeed, the moment you suspect or detect plagiarism, copy the paper: this will enable you to mark it up, save it for post-semester research, or other uses. Then contact Dean of Academic Programs Ellen Guyer. If the student admits to the violation, the instructor and Dean decide on appropriate sanction within the guidelines of Macalester's "Academic Integrity Policy," found in the back of the Faculty Handbook. Sanctions range from a grade of zero on the assignment to (for a third violation) dismissal. I understand that the level and range of these sanctions may be revisited early in the coming year. If the student does not admit to the violation, a hearing process ensues according to the Academic Integrity Policy guide-lines. Please consult those pages for further details. It may be tempting for faculty to handle some academic integrity issues privately with the student. While faculty are given wide latitude in running and grading their courses, it is nonetheless imperative for all such incidents to be reported to the Dean of Academic Programs. You student may have done this before, or may again in the future. The only way to know this is if all cases are reported to the Dean. Preventing Plagiarism Before it Happens: My goal in this memo has not been to turn faculty into paranoid police. My hope is that all students will succeed the "right" way, using their own work and the cited works of others. Still, I suspect that the rise of the Internet and its massive easy plagiarism opportunities will change the way instructors teach their courses. Instructors may require students to write using specific class sources and perspectives, or from fixed lists of library or reserve materials. This will reduce, but not eliminate, the incidence of borrowed papers. Instructors may also renew the use of in-class or evening exams. Among other things, exams supply an "unedited" baseline of student capacity. A highly specific unreturned two-page overnight-turnaround "reaction paper" in the first week of class can give instructors another sort of baseline. Short-turnaround take-home exams based on class materials are another option. For longer papers, the submission of prospecti, followed by drafts, might also discourage plagiarism. One could also remind students that using other people's work is good, and is applauded when properly acknowledged. Lastly, I require students to provide not only bibliographies but also "generous acknowledgments" of all who helped (proofed, discussed, edited, etc.) on each paper. I note that scholars work this way, and that the longer and fuller their acknowledgments, the happier I am. Finally, the College via the First Year Course program, the valuable Library/CIT faculty-staff seminars, or other vehicles may in the future also make adjustments to best fit the College's programs to potential plagiarism in this new Internet age.
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