WHAT SHOULD WE KNOW ABOUT PLAGIARISM?

Speech communications Professor Stephen Lucas writes:

The term “plagiarism” comes from the Latin word plagiarus, or kidnapper. To plagiarize means to present another person’s language or ideas as your own. When you plagiarize, you give the impression that you have written or thought of something yourself when you have actually taken it from someone else. And, when it comes to plagiarism, no subject poses more confusion ¾or more temptation¾than the Internet. Because it’s so easy to copy information from the Web, many people are not aware of the need to cite sources (that is, to give credit to the author) when they use Internet materials in their research papers and speeches. To avoid plagiarism, you need to give credit to the authors of documents found on the Internet just as you need to give credit to the authors of print books and articles.

When you do research in the library or use the World Wide Web to prepare essays, term papers or class presentations, it is your responsibility to avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism is a form of cheating just as inappropriate as cheating on a test. This selection from an information technology textbook presents a warning to students about plagiarism and explains how inappropriate use of materials found on the World Wide Web can lead to plagiarism and low-quality papers and presentations.

No matter how much students may be able to rationalize cheating in college, ignorance of the consequences is not an excuse. When students try to pass off someone else’s term paper as their own, they are committing a form of cheating called plagiarism, and most instructors announce the penalties for this type of cheating at the beginning of the course. They warn students that the penalty for cheating of this sort is usually a failing grade in the course and possible suspension or expulsion from school.

Even so, probably every student becomes aware before long that the World Wide Web contains sites that offer term papers, either for free or for a price. Despite these warnings from their professors, some dishonest students may download papers and just change the author’s name to their own. Others are more likely just to use the papers for ideas. Perhaps, as Ellen Laird suggests in an article on Internet plagiarism, “the fear of getting caught makes the online papers more a diversion than an invitation to widescale plagiarism.”

*Three Types of Plagiarism

1. Global Plagiarism:

Stealing an essay, term paper, or speech from a single source and passing it off as your own.

2. Patchwork Plagiarism:

Stealing ideas or language from two or three sources and passing them off as your own.

3. Incremental Plagiarism:

Failing to give credit for particular parts of an essay, term paper, or speech that are borrowed from other people.

How the Web Can Lead to Plagiarism

Numerous web sites offer term papers to students. There are two types of term paper web sites:

Sites offering papers for free: Such a site requires that users fill out a membership form and then provides at least one free student term paper. Good quality is not guaranteed, since free paper mills often subsist on the submissions of poor students, whose contributions may be subliterate.

Sites offering papers for sale: Commercial Internet sites may charge $6 to $10 a page, which students may charge to their credit card. Expense is no guarantee of quality. Moreover, the term paper factory may turn around and make your $350 customized paper available to others¾even fellow classmates working on the same assignment¾for half the price.

How the Instructors Catch Cheaters

How do instructors detect and defend against student plagiarism? There are several reasons professors are unlikely to be fooled by students who plagiarize the work of others. Often, professors tailor term paper assignments to work done in class. They also monitor students’ progress through steps of an assignment, from preliminary outline to completion. And, professors are alert to papers that seem radically different from a student’s past work.

Eugene Dwyer, a professor of art history at Kenyon College, requires that papers in his classes be submitted electronically, along with a list of World Wide Web site references. “This way I can click along as I read the paper. This format is more efficient than running around the college library, checking each footnote.”

Just as the Internet is the source of cheating, it is also a tool for detecting cheaters. Search programs make it possible for instructors to locate texts containing identified strings of words from the millions of pages found on the World Wide Web. Thus, a professor can input passages from a student’s paper into a search program that scans the Web for identical blocks of text. Indeed, some web sites favored by instructors build a database of papers over time so that students can’t recycle work previously handed in by others. One system can lock on to a stolen phrase as short as eight words. It can also identify copied material even if it has been changed slightly from the original. More than 1,000 educational institutions have turned to Oakland, California-based Turnitin.com (www.turnitin.com), an online service that searches documents for unoriginality. Another program professors use is the Self-Plagiarism Detection Tool, or SplaT (http://splat.cs.arizona.edu).

How the Web Can Lead to Low-Quality Papers

William Rukeyser, coordinator for Learning in the Real World, a nonprofit information clearinghouse, points out another problem: The Web enables students “to cut and paste together reports or presentations that appear to have taken hours or days to write but have really been assembled in minutes with no actual mastery or understanding by the student.”

Philosophy professor David Rothenberg, of New Jersey Institute of Technology, reports that as a result of students doing more of their research on the Web, he has seen “a disturbing decline in both the quality of the writing and the originality of the thoughts expressed.”

How does a professor spot an essay or a term paper that has relied too much on Web research? There are four clues that suggest that an essay or term paper has been based primarily on Web research. No books cited: The student’s bibliography cites no books, just articles or references to websites. Sadly, says Rothenberg, “one finds few references to careful, in-depth commentaries on the subject of the paper, the kind of analysis that requires a book, rather than an article, for its full development.” Outdated material: “A lot of the material in the bibliography is strangely out of date,” says Rothenberg. “A lot of stuff on the Web that is advertised as timely is actually at least a few years old.” Unrelated pictures and graphs: Students may intersperse the text with a lot of impressive-looking pictures and graphs that actually bear little relation to the precise subject of the paper. Professor Rothenberg notes, “Cut and pasted from the vast realm of what’s out there on the Web for the taking, they masquerade as original work.” Superficial references: “Too much of what passes for information online these days is simply advertising for related information,” points out Rothenberg. “Screen after screen shows you where you can find out more, how you can connect to this place or that.” Other kinds of online information are detailed but often superficial. Professor Rothenberg writes, “Some sites include pages and pages of federal documents, corporate propaganda, and snippets of commentary written by people whose credibility is difficult to assess.”