Plagiarism: A Guide for ECSU Students and Faculty

Resources for Faculty

Quick Plagiarism Support for Faculty

Help students avoid plagiarism by alerting them to Resources for Students.

ECSU's Office of Judicial Affairs: Resources from Kimberly Armstrong Silcox, J.D. 
University Judicial Officer 
Wood Support Services Center, Room 246                                      
Phone: (860) 465-4426
E-mail: silcoxk@easternct.edu
Rita Malenczyk's handout: If You Suspect a Student of Plagiarism

Barbara Little Liu's Sample Academic Honesty Policy Statement For Syllabus

Faculty Resources

Academic Honesty and Intellectual Ownership
This document was originally prepared in May 1996 by Inger Brody, Ann Ekes, and Jeanette DiScala as part of the University of Puget Sound's Academic Standards Committee, Subcommittee on Academic Honesty. Intended as a teaching guide, it introduces students to the issues of intellectual ownership and accepted forms of citation. Included are sample published pages, along with a range of ways in which students might use such passages in their papers.

Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers
Robert Harris, Vanguard University of Southern California.

Can We Control Cheating in The Classroom?
Joe Kerkvliet, Oregon State University, and Charles L. Sigmund, Office for Oregon Health Plan Policy and Research, Journal of Economic Education, Fall 1999. "A new study on cheating by college students has found that diligent professors can virtually eliminate cheating on exams through a combination of efforts, including using multiple versions of the same test, hiring additional proctors and giving verbal warnings about cheating." Study On Student Cheating Finds Profs Make A Difference

Cheating 101: Paper Mills and You
Aimed at providing faculty with an overview of the current state of Internet Paper Mills, how to locate Paper Mills, how to detect plagiarized papers, how to track down suspicious papers, and how to combat plagiarism by Margaret Fain, Assistant Head of Public Services, and Peggy Bates, Reference Librarian, at Coastal Carolina University.

Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices
"Plagiarism has always concerned teachers and administrators, who want students’ work to represent their own efforts and to reflect the outcomes of their learning. However, with the advent of the Internet and easy access to almost limitless written material on every conceivable topic, suspicion of student plagiarism has begun to affect teachers at all levels, at times diverting them from the work of developing students’ writing, reading, and critical thinking abilities. This statement responds to the growing educational concerns about plagiarism in four ways:

1. by defining plagiarism

2. by suggesting some of the causes of plagiarism.

3. by proposing a set of responsibilities (for students, teachers, and administrators) to address the problem of plagiarism.

4. by recommending a set of practices for teaching and learning that can significantly reduce the likelihood of plagiarism.

The statement is intended to provide helpful suggestions and clarifications so that instructors, administrators, and students can work together more effectively in support of excellence in teaching and learning."

Deterring Plagiarism: Some Strategies
Dr. Margaret Procter, Coordinator, Writing Support, University of Toronto.

Downloadable Term Papers: What's a Prof. to Do?
Tom Rocklin, Director, Center for Teaching, The University of Iowa:

Electronic Plagiarism Seminar
Gretchen Pearson, Public Services Librarian, Noreen Reale Falcone Library, Le Moyne College. Up-to-date, thorough website including the following sections:

How Cheating Helps Drive Better Instruction
Greg Van Belle, Department of English, Edmonds Community College. Proactive strategies for faculty.

Internet Plagiarism: Strategies to Deter Academic Misconduct
Mary Hricko, Library Director, Kent State University.

Plagiarized.com: The Instructor's Guide to Internet Plagiarism
Authored by a student: The purpose of this site is to help teachers or professors (or even parents) determine if a given piece of academic work has been obtained from the Internet. Check out Dead Giveaways: What to watch for when you suspect an essay isn't from the student's own head.

Plagiarism
Sharon Stoerger's excellent mega-site including:

Plagiarism and Anti-Plagiarism
Heyward Ehrlich, Department of English, Rutgers University.

Plagiarism and the Web
A very helpful site by Bruce Leland, Professor of English, Western Illinois University.

Plagiarism in Colleges in USA
Attorney Ronald B. Standler. Plagiarism by students is a serious problem in colleges in the USA. This essay discusses plagiarism from a legal perspective.

Preventing Academic Dishonesty
From Tools for Teaching, by Barbara Gross Davis, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Student Life-Educational Development, University of California, Berkeley. Includes specific strategies for Papers and Exams.

Student Plagiarism in an Online World
Julie J.C.H. Ryan, a graduate teaching assistant at George Washington University and Information Security Consultant in ASEE Prism Online.

The Plagiarism Handbook: Strategies for Preventing, Detecting, and Dealing with Plagiarism
Robert A. Harris; cartoons by Vic Lockman. Los Angeles, CA: Pyrczak Publishing, 2001. We have two copies that circulate and one copy in Reference. PN167.H37 2001

Using Sources Effectively
Robert A. Harris, targets unintentional plagiarism and the ineffective use of research source material. Free examination copies are available to faculty via Pyrczak Publishing; click on the Exam Copy tab.

The Web's plagiarism police
An excellent article by by Andy Dehnart for Salon, June 14, 1999. Issues a caveat regarding various anti-plagiarism tools; reviews Plagiarism.org and EVE.

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Examples of Paper Mills on the Web

For the most up-to-date list, please see Internet Paper Mills from Peggy Bates & Margaret Fain, Kimbel Library, Coastal Carolina University: "Our list of Internet Term Paper Sites includes over 250 sites that were active as of November 2006. The list of Subject Specific Term Paper Sites contains additional sites."

Academic Term Papers

Essayworld.com

Other People's Papers

An Evil House of Cheat

Free Student Essays

School Sucks
Cheathouse Free Reports and Essays TermpapersRus
ChuckIII.com

Genius Papers

Thousands of Papers (T.O.P.)

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Faculty Tools for Plagiarism Detection

Software

Try this 1st! Select one or more suspicious phrases and plug them into Google's Advanced Search, using the exact phrase feature (see screen shot below):

Using Blackboard? Try SafeAssign
For help with SafeAssign, contact the Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) at (860) 465-1248 or cit@easternct.edu.

"SafeAssign™ is a plagiarism prevention service, offered by Blackboard to its Blackboard Learning System Enterprise, Vista Enterprise and CE Enterprise clients. This service helps educators prevent plagiarism by detecting unoriginal content in student papers. In addition to acting as a plagiarism deterrent, it also has features designed to aid in educating students about plagiarism and importance of proper attribution of any borrowed content. SafeAssign is available for Blackboard enterprise clients at no additional cost. SafeAssign is a part of the Blackboard Beyond family and is centrally hosted by Blackboard, like the rest of the Beyond products and services. Although it is a new Blackboard service, it is based on a mature and proven technology that Blackboard acquired from Sciworth Inc. (MyDropBox) and enhanced to offer even better stability, performance, and integration with other Blackboard products. SafeAssign is delivered and integrated via a Blackboard Building Block or Blackboard PowerLink. Both are available on Behind the Blackboard for Blackboard System Administrators to download. Once installed and enabled, instructors can start using SafeAssign right away to prevent plagiarism in their courses."

EVE Plagiarism Detection System Windows ONLY!

"EVE2 is a very powerful tool that allows professors and teachers at all levels of the educational system to determine if students have plagiarized material from the World Wide Web. EVE2 accepts essays in plain text, Microsoft Word, or Corel Word Perfect format and returns links to web pages from which a student may have plagiarized. EVE2 has been developed to be powerful enough to find plagiarized material while not overwhelming the professor with false links."

Glatt Plagiarism Services, Inc. produces three different software Programs to help deter and detect plagiarism:

  1. Glatt Plagiarism Teaching Program (GPTeach):
    A Tutorial Program to provide computer assisted instruction on what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it. Includes definitions of direct and indirect plagiarism, when and how to provide attribution, and mastery test of concepts.

  2. Glatt Plagiarism Screening Program (GPSP) A highly sophisticated Screening Program to detect plagiarism. Typically used in academic institutions or in the legal profession for cases of copyright infringement.

  3. Glatt Plagiarism Self-Detection Program (GPSD) A Screening Program to help detect inadvertent instances of plagiarism.

  4. For additional information, see endorsements and a partial list of academic institutions that have helped fight plagiarismwith Glatt Plagiarism Services.

Moss (for a Measure Of Software Similarity) is an automatic system for determining the similarity of C, C++, Java, Pascal, Ada, ML, Lisp, or Scheme programs. To date, the main application of Moss has been in detecting plagiarism in programming classes. Since its development in 1994, Moss has been very effective in this role. The algorithm behind moss is a significant improvement over other cheating detection algorithms (at least, over those known to us).

Moss is being provided in the hope that it will benefit the educational community. Moss is fast, easy to use, and free. To obtain a Moss account, send a request to moss@moss.stanford.edu." See additional details on the web site.

Plagiarism.org: "Our mission is to help people all over the world prevent plagiarism and restore integrity to written work. Plagiarism.org was founded in 1996. With increased interest, Plagarism.org became one of the Internet's predominant anti-plagiarism resources for educators and students alike."

The Learning Center provides

Plagiarism.org is the parent of Turnitin, "the world's leading academic plagiarism prevention solution & digital assessment tool." Product Brochure.

There are issues with using Turnitin: from The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Anti-Cheating Crusader Vexes Some Professors

Antiplagiarism Software Takes On the Honor Code

Judge Rules Plagiarism-Detection Tool Falls Under 'Fair Use'

For more on Turnitin, see Guilty In Whose Eyes? The Chasm Between Student and Faculty Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty: Strategies to Bridge the Gap.

The Plagiarism Resource Center at The University of Virginia Windows & Linux
The goal of this web site is to help reduce the impact of plagiarism on education and educational institutions. At present, it distributes free software to detect plagiarism and provides links to other resources. The site’s sole author is Lou Bloomfield, Professor of Physics, University of Virginia, Box 400714, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4714, bloomfield@virginia.edu.

Articles

Actions Do Speak Louder than Words: Deterring Plagiarism with the Use of Plagiarism-Detection Software
Bear F. Braumoeller and Brian J. Gaines, PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Dec., 2001), pp. 835-839.

The Cat-and-Mouse Game of Plagiarism Detection
Jeffrey R. Young. Colleges provide professors with new online tools to give them the upper hand. The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 6, 2001.

Competing to Catch Plagiarizers Inside Higher Ed, July 10, 2007

Blackboard incorporates a plagiarism detection service into its software, posing potential challenge to Turnitin.


Detecting Plagiarized Papers
Margaret Fain, Assistant Head of Public Services, Coastal Carolina University.

Detection Tools and Methods from the Virtual Academic Integrity Laboratory (VAIL), Center for Intellectual Property, University of Maryland University College.

Plagiarism Prevention and Detection, UK Higher Education Academy.

Plagiarism Detection Software, Its Use by Universities, and Student Attitudes to Cheating: A Report for the University of Sydney Teaching and Learning Committee Tested Turnitin, EduTie, PlagiServe, Glatt Plagiarism Self-Detection program, CopyCatch Gold, EVE2 and WordCheck Keyword DP.

Conclusions: "There are a wide range of plagiarism detection tools and software available to universities and other academic institutions. Of these Turnitin.com appears to be the most widely used, and has been chosen by JISC in the UK for its centrally provided plagiarism detection service, and by CAVAL Collaborative Solutions as the program to market to all Australian universities. Although plagiarism detection tools provide an excellent service in detecting matching text between documents, care needs to be taken in their use. A noted fault of the online services, such as Turnitin.com, is the inability to distinguish correctly cited text from plagiarised text, necessitating human intervention before a paper is declared plagiarised. This may pose a problem, or a barrier, to implementing such a service university-wide, especially in faculties where large class sizes are seen as a reason for not checking students’ work carefully for plagiarism. The very fact that students are notified of the intent to use plagiarism detection tools to check assignments acts as a deterrent. However, information on the definition of plagiarism and how to avoid it should be made available to all students."

Saving Time or Betraying Trust? Inside Higher Ed, November 12, 2007
SafeAssign & Turnitin at University of Maryland at College Park: A proposal at the University of Maryland to detect possible plagiarism with software pits overworked graduate students against students and professors.

Using Electronic Detection Tools: Choosing the Right Tool for theTask, page 24.
Recommendations taken from Good Practice Guide, commissioned by JISC and written by Jude Carroll and Jon Appleton from Oxford Brookes University. "If the lecturer is worried about students copying from each other, they need a tool that checks for collusion. CopyCatch, devised by a forensic linguist and available for purchase (see resources in Appendix 1 (42kb)), requires a relatively short time to match each script with all the others in the cohort. Matches over 60% or 70% (depending on the task) are clear indications of the need for specific checking of those papers more closely. CopyCatch can only be used if students submit work electronically."

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Page created and maintained by Susan Herzog
J. Eugene Smith Library
Eastern Connecticut State University

Last Update: November 12, 2009.