International Journal of Contemporary Applied Sciences
(ISSN: 2308-1365)
Vol. 2, No. 6, June 2015
www.ijcas.net
Digital Plagiarism: Prevent and Detect
Vahid Motamedi
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Technology
Faculty of Psychology and Education, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran
[email protected], [email protected]
Abstract
Plagiarism is a serious problem in academia today. It seems to be on the rise. The rise of the
Internet has led to the decline of students writing. Plagiarism can no longer be neglected formally
viewed as irrelevant. There is a growing concern about student academic honesty. Pressure to
publish, especially when coupled with lack of time, the desire to get work into print quickly, and
carelessness makes an individual commits the act of plagiarism, whether conscious or
unconscious. This paper defines plagiarism, will discuss how to discourage plagiarism, provides
strategies that can be employed to detect plagiarism, and concludes with some suggestion as
what teachers, students and schools should do to prevent plagiarism.
Keywords: Plagiarism, Teacher, Student, School, Internet, Academia
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International Journal of Contemporary Applied Sciences
(ISSN: 2308-1365)
Vol. 2, No. 6, June 2015
www.ijcas.net
1. Introduction
Plagiarism is an intellectual theft, academic robbery, and the rape of the human mind. In the
academic and professional world, it is unacceptable. It is unethical. However, plagiarism is a
problem that has existed as long as man has had the ability to communicate ideas. Students need
to be taught to learn but are too often given the opportunity to slip through the cracks. Education
becomes a high stakes competition for grades rather than achievement or a game of avoidance of
obstacles to the student‟s poorly chosen priorities. Fisher (2005) quotes Piaget by stating that the
principal goal of education is to create individuals who are creative, inventive and discoverers.
This was the first goal of education. The second goal of education according to Piaget is “to form
minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered” (p. 23).
Education is and should be about the development of good mental habits – critical and creative
thinking, problem solving, communication and analysis, and the learning of academic and
professional ethics – respect for another person‟s ideas and work. Unfortunately, given the
convenience and availability of information on the Internet these goals are becoming lost in a
chronic mess of academic misconduct, plagiarism. According to the organization that has
developed both Plagiarism.org and Tumitin.com, both sites that provide resources, reference
materials and tools to recognize and combat plagiarism, studies indicate that approximately 30%
of students may be regularly plagiarizing their written work (Plagiarism.org, 2002). If this is
proven to be true, the teacher‟s role in the classroom is altered. Rather than an educator, the
teacher‟s primary role becomes the investigator, police officer, prosecuting attorney, jury and
judge. Thus, it is necessary for educators to be aware of available tools to detect plagiarism as
well as strategies to prevent it.
A 2001 article prepared by “Who‟s Who Among American High School Students” noted that
four-fifths of high school students surveyed admitted having cheated at some time (Walker,
2001). Furthermore, the Center for Academic Integrity reported that over 50% of the surveyed
students admitted to have plagiarized material from the Internet (CAI Research, 2001).
Plagiarism from the Internet or digital plagiarism is occurring at alarming levels, according to
statistics gathered by Tumifin.com, a site that provides a service that checks students‟ work for
digital plagiarism and includes a report that lists the specific sites that the information was
originally published on. The statistics indicate the cheating is occurring at significant levels
across the United States.
2. What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is the act of coping the words or ideas of another person without appropriately
citing the author. Plagiarism refers to the act of “appropriation of another person‟s idea,
processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit” (Ferguson, 2000, p. 76264).
According to Standler (2012) plagiarism “can be the quotation of a sentence or two, without
quotation marks or without a citation to the true author.” He further states, “In the most serious
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International Journal of Contemporary Applied Sciences
(ISSN: 2308-1365)
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cases, a significant fraction of the entire work was written by someone else: the plagiarist
removed the true author(s) name(s) and substituted the plagiarist„s name, perhaps did some reformatting of the text, then submitted the work for credit in a class, as part of the requirements
for a degree, or as part of a published article or book” (p. 5). Digital plagiarism occurs in a
number of ways. The Internet allows students to copy material from a variety of sites and
compose what appears to be an original document. Or students may obtain an entire paper, from
cover page to bibliography from an Internet paper mill. There are reportedly hundreds of these
paper mills available on the World Wide Web that offers a variety of services. It is altogether
possible for a student to purchase an already written research paper or request a custom written
paper; some of these services are available free of charge (see, for example, Suarez & Martin,
2001). While some researchers argue that the Internet has not significantly impacted the
percentages of student plagiarism, studies have indicated the seriousness of the problem (CAI
Research, 2001). These numbers indicate that educators need to teach and students need to learn
how to appropriately use Internet resources, to abide by the legal, ethical and honest use of the
material. It is important that students understand the consequences of disregard for intellectual
property and copyright law.
Currently more than 98% of American public schools have access to the Internet. It has
proven to be a valuable tool in education, one frequently used by students both in and out of
school. According to a survey completed by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 94% of
students between the ages of 12 and 17 use the Internet for research. Seventy one percent cited
the Internet as their main source of information. However, it is important that the Internet be
regarded as a collection of resources not merely a reference tool. According to a survey done by
Rutgers University in 2001, more than half of 4,471 high school students had copied sentences
and paragraphs from Internet resources into their papers, projects and other assignments (Minkel,
2002a). Proving how important it is that students learn that material that they find and use from
the Internet is protected by copyright law. Callahan (cited in Lathrop & Foss, 2005) in the
preface of Guiding Students from Cheating and Plagiarism to Honesty and Integrity: Strategies
for Change states:
Nobody goes into teaching to be a cop. And for many teachers, at high schools and
universities alike, cheating by students stands as the most odious fact of professional life.
Who wants to police and discipline the very students you are supposed to inspire? Who
wants the confrontations, the denials, the tears and – too often – the administrative
battles? Nobody, which is one reason why research shows that a great many teachers are
often aware of cheating and yet take no action (p. xv).
Ehrlich (2011) argues that it is a formidable task for many teachers to prove suspected plagiarism
at the end of the semester. “If plagiarism is to be combated, it must be done regularly throughout
the semester, not just at the end” (p. 1).
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International Journal of Contemporary Applied Sciences
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www.ijcas.net
3. How to Deter Students from Plagiarism
Teachers and librarians in many schools across the nation are working together to prevent
and detect plagiarism. These schools have worked to set policies regarding academic misconduct
and use common search engines to verify student work. However, despite this work and the
attention that the issue of digital plagiarism attracts nationwide, there remains no universal rules,
followed and enforced by schools to guide educators and maintain consistent policies regarding
student work (Minkel, 2002a). Longood (2002) has outlined a list of recommended goals for
schools regarding policies that would deter students from plagiarism. These include:
• Increase student awareness of cheating and plagiarism.
• Define and determine the threshold of cheating, plagiarism, and academic integrity.
• Train faculty on how to recognize cheating, how to document suspicious, and how to
create assignments that do not lend themselves to cheating.
• Disseminate information on cheating and plagiarism to parents and the community
• Support the idea of swift and sure consequences
• Recommend that the school board address academic integrity in its district‟s policy
(cited in Minkel, 2002a)
Timm (2012) has also suggested some ideas as how to discourage plagiarism. These
include (a) give specific assignments, (b) require specific components, (c) give related
assignments, (d) ask students to submit sections in stages, (e) have students establish a research
trail, (f) make students work public, (g) require revisions, (h) get students to discuss and explain
their project, (i) do not accept papers that attempt to circumvent requirements, (j) let students
know that you are in the know, and (k) ask students to sign an integrity certificate.
The school year must begin with a discussion about misconduct. Plagiarism should be
defined, as well as other offenses that may be considered forms of academic misconduct. The
policy should include an explanation about why plagiarism is unethical and what intellectual
property is. This would best be done through discussing the students‟ own work: “When students
think of themselves as authors working with an idea they have constructed, it becomes personal.
Once they have created an original idea, we need to ask them, “Do you want your neighbors
using your ideas as their idea in their paper?” (Minkel, 2002a). Teachers should provide students
with written examples of plagiarism, then model the correct forms of citation and describe the
appropriate procedures toward resolving incidents of misconduct. In other words the teacher
needs to show the students what plagiarism is to even the smallest degree, and model how to
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International Journal of Contemporary Applied Sciences
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www.ijcas.net
appropriately paraphrase or rewrite the information and cite the ideas. In addition, educators
need to work towards creating assignments that do not lend themselves easily to cheating.
Assignments should be such that no encyclopedia or web site can directly provide an answer to
the question. It is absolutely necessary for students to use higher level thinking skills, to engage
and apply ideas, not just report on them.
Teachers must invest in the students‟ research and writing. This is perhaps one of the best
ways to deter any kind of academic misconduct, especially plagiarism. The research and writing
process should be emphasized; require and check topic proposals or thesis statements, outlines,
working bibliographies and multiple drafts. Students should also reflect on their product as well
as the process of researching and writing. These steps place equal value on the process as that of
the product. The students are aware that their work will be checked and evaluated, that the
process itself is what is significant.
4. Strategies to Detect Plagiarism
It is important for teachers to learn what resources are available and strategies they can
employ to detect plagiarism. It is difficult to simply use the same search engines and keywords
that the student may have used because URLs are changed and information is often updated or
changed and sometimes sites are removed entirely. Therefore, teachers should be prepared with
other, more reliable strategies to detect plagiarism in students‟ work (Hricko, 2002). The teacher
should be aware of formatting that does not meet the paper requirements or is in general unusual.
For example multiple fonts, grayed out letters, unusual use of capitalization, or even website
printout page numbers or dates. The teacher should also be aware of the individual student‟s use
of jargon, vocabulary and sentence structure. These characteristics should be consistent with
student‟s grade level and ability; the quality of the writing should be similar to previously
completed work. A research paper that includes portions that are not required or appears
mismatched or an assignment that is missing requirements entirely should cause concern.
Finally, the bibliography should reflect appropriate citation style and contain a variety of
resources. In checking resources, the teacher should verify the resources‟ availability and
copyright dates. Material that is not available in the school‟s library or is generally not easily
accessible is suspicious. As is a large quantity of resources that are more than 10 years old
(Hinchliffe, 1998). Suarez and Martin (2001) believe that the best way to stop plagiarism is by
means of prevention. They offer some guidelines to prevent plagiarism. These guidelines include
(a) offer a list of topics with the option of the student‟s choosing an alternative topic if he or she
discusses it with you first, (b) require the paper in a specific format with a given number of
references from a variety of sources, (c) periodically check the progress of each student‟s paper
throughout the semester, and (d) educate students about plagiarism by explaining what it is and
how to avoid it.
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Educators can track down plagiarism using a variety of tools as well as some basic
checks of the original text sources listed in the student‟s bibliography. There are numerous
websites that offer free research papers as well as papers for purchase. These can sometimes be
searched using key terms from the student‟s work. There are also a number of organizations that
offer screening services. One such service, Tumitin.com receives papers as word processing
documents and stores them in a database. From there, the service screens the papers and
composes a list of websites, resources and articles that contain matches to any portion of the
paper. According to founder John Barrie, approximately 70% of the plagiarized sources are cut
and paste from the Internet, 25% are assignments that have been traded or passed on by friends
or siblings, and 5% come from other sources, like the costly online services (Minkel, 2002a).
However, the screening is not entirely reliable because Tuminin.com does not yet have the
authority to check papers against major subscription databases, or previously published magazine
articles which may have been taken from such sites as EBSCO Host. Considering this, the
service is still a powerful tool in identifying plagiarism and locating the original sources (Minkel,
2002b). According to Barrie, more than 1,200 high schools around the world use Tumitin.com,
and the site receives approximately 50-75 new requests everyday for assignments to be checked
for plagiarism.
One of the greatest detriments of plagiarism is that students fail to learn necessary
research skills. They do not learn how to interpret and apply material, analyze its worth or
appropriateness or organize information to make a strong argument or build an adequate defense
of a topic. Students miss out on the opportunity to learn how to think. In his article “Web of
Deceit” Minkel (2002a) quotes a former teacher as she recalls what it was like teaching students
to use the library before the Internet. “Just figuring out what kind of print resources had
information about your topic was an education in and of itself. Computers did not read billions of
words to look for the phrases you were seeking. You had to narrow it down” (p. 51). Badge and
Scott (2009) in their concluding remarks explain the widespread adoption of technologies to
prevent student plagiarism. "The widespread adoption of technologies to detect plagiarism in
student writing has happened rapidly and there is still little solid empirical evidence to show the
effectiveness of these tools in improving student practices" (p. 10). They believe that the
introduction of technologies demand academic staff to make a radical shift in the way that they
teach students. As they point out "an area for future research could be the investigation of the
impact on these tools on staff teaching practices. Staff can now be shown that their assignments
can be answered by a single Google query and repeated high levels of plagiarism on such
assignments may force them to reflect on their own practices" (p. 10).
5. Conclusion
Educators should not and cannot accept the supposed inevitability of plagiarism. It is the
teacher‟s responsibility to prevent and detect plagiarism. The teacher has the responsibility of
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International Journal of Contemporary Applied Sciences
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www.ijcas.net
defining terms, modeling appropriate behavior and developing assignments and tasks that require
traditional methods and sources of research. Students should learn about the process and critical
thinking involved in conducting research. The schools themselves need to develop detailed plans
regarding academic misconduct, providing goals and guidelines for teachers. The goal of
education is to teach students to think. This requires educators to care about how students think
and to teach them how to think. This is not by any means an easy task; as Minkel states,
“knowing how to think is not an easy thing to copy and paste into students‟ minds” (Minkel,
2002a). According to Smith (2003), a concern raised by studies of American educational system
is that students at all levels are unable to think effectively. He further states that students “cannot
understand challenging texts or complex issues; their reasoning is often illogical and they do not
critically assess arguments” (p. 24). Therein lies the challenge to any educator, as well as any
student. How do you teach a child to think? How do you compete with today‟s competition?
With the entertainment industry? With technology? With the Internet? Set expectations, be
specific and detailed, establish a school or classroom policy, be fair and be consistent. It is only
through education that students will learn the value of intellectual property and to respect other‟s
ideas and words. It is only through education that students will apply this knowledge, this value,
to the Internet and regard it as a complex collection of references, rather than a tool that can be
used and misused.
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