Plagiarism and Anti-Plagiarism

College plagiarism seems to be on the increase. So we round up and decry the usual suspects: the rise of the internet and the decline of student writing. To be sure, there are term papers for sale on the internet, and the very process of surfing the Web encourages looseness in borrowing. And surely fewer students seem to master the art of sustained research and argument in long papers these days. Each semester at term paper time a few of my colleagues invariably seek computer help for diagnosing and tracing suspected instances of plagiarism. Of course, by then it is almost too late. For many teachers, the labor of proving suspected plagiarism is a formidable obstacle to face 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.

Here are some suggestions.

A: The Problem of Plagiarism:

Try these questions out on yourself.

1. What are the details of the plagiarism policies of your university, college, department, course, and assignment? Where have they been made public to your students? How many of your students can adequately explain these policies?

2. What are the local penalties for plagiarism? When was the last time a student in your department was prosecuted for plagiarism? How many have been expelled, permanently denied graduation, or faced with civil procedures for plagiarism? How much minor plagiarism is acceptable before a suspected instance is worth prosecuting? What is the proper procedure for detecting and reporting plagiarism? How much assistance is available to you for the detecting and prosecution of a case? What is regarded as satisfactory proof of plagiarism? What is the appropriate recourse, to settle the matter personally with the student, within the department, before a college disciplinary board, or with civil authorities?

3. How does the use of computers affect plagiarism? Do copyright laws apply to pages on the internet? How much can be quoted from an internet article under fair use? How can an internet site be cited as a source? How much information can be borrowed acceptably from a CD-ROM encyclopedia? In using abstracts, digests, excerpts, and commercial databases for research, at what point does legitimate use become plagiarism or a outright violation of copyright?

(A related query: How does the experience of students and teachers with the familiar technology of photocopying, faxing, answering machines, software downloading and copying, audio and video tape production, and tape duplication and editing produce a new frame of mind, one that did not exist a generation or two ago?)

If a faculty member is not sure of the answers to the questions above, what can students be expected to know? If students have substantially more computer expertise than faculty members in using the internet, computer multitasking, and CD-ROMs, are they therefore almost able to plagiarize with impunity and without fear of detection from their teachers?

What do you estimate to be the rate of occurrence of the following in your courses? Are they rare, infrequent, occasional, familiar, common, customary, typical, normal, prevalent, or universal?

a. Fraud: outright purchase or copying of an entire paper, perhaps with a new introduction and conclusion added. In some cases, such copying may entail copyright infringement.

b. Substantial plagiarism: widespread or considerable borrowing of material, passing off borrowed passages as original, failure to indicate quoted evidence or give bibliographical sources or other appropriate credit.

c. Incidental plagiarism: small-scale borrowing, copying, downloading, or insertion without appropriate quotation, credit, or acknowledgement.

d. Free of plagiarism. Fully original research and writing with total acknowledgement of all ideas, quotations, cited evidence, and sources.

C: The solution: Possible countermeasures.

1. Don't merely assign an isolated term paper at the start of the semester and then collect it at the end. Increasingly students do not know how to do the planning, research, and revision required in such papers. Under such circumstances plagiarism may be a strategy of desperation more than of opportunism.

2. Provide a continuing context for student work, including shorter papers, research proposals, and oral reports. Insist that students use a series of several formal worksheets for research proposals. Spend some time explaining research opportunities in the field, including a supervised visit to the college library. Explain the opportunities and limitations of research on the internet. Be frank and open about the existence of purchased papers.

3. In small classes, make the research process (including the existence of plagiarism) as public as possible. Ask students to share research proposals with the entire class in oral reports. These occasions can be a major learning opportunity as workable and unworkable proposals are discussed, as well as interesting and trite ones. Ask students which proposals they feel are most original and which seem indistinguishable from plagiarized ones.

Do not accept papers that short-circuit the research proposal procedure. They are much more likely to be plagiarized. Proposals that mysteriously arise from no where and reach an unexpected conclusion are to be suspected.

4. In larger classes, insist on a research trail which becomes part of the submitted paper. Insist on a research plan which makes use of the college library. You may wish to insist on all the original handwritten notes, marked photocopies or printouts, and copies of all computer disk files. Make your suggestions regarding the research plan and the student's use of them a formal part of the project.

5. If you receive a paper you suspect to be plagiarized, move cautiously. Examine the sources cited carefully: do they cluster oddly, or seem unlikely to have been found in the college library? Are errors in bibliographical technique actually efforts to misrepresent the research done. Does the style of the opening and closing paragraphs differ from the others? Be careful what you write on the paper: writing only "Please see me" makes its point emphatically. Ask the student in a conference to explain the main point or points or terminology of the paper. Discuss with the student possible avenues of additional research from any unused material.

Don't assume infallibility: yes, plagiarized papers can always slip through, and the suspicion of plagiarism can always be raised where it doesn't apply.

Useful webpages for detecting and fighting plagiarism:

Recent articles in the press (1998)

John N. Hickman, "Cybercheats: Term Paper Shopping Online" The New Republic, March 23, 1998

...In reponse to a May 1998 query about using the internet to detect plagiarism in a dissertation...