Transcript Dealing with Cut and Paste Student Plagiarism

Plagiarism
Michael Lorenzen
LIB 197
23 September 2003
Agenda
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What is Plagiarism
How to Avoid Plagiarism
Why Students Plagiarize
Sources of Online Plagiarism
How Faculty Detect Plagiarized Papers
What is Plagiarism
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Three Types of Plagiarism –
Direct Quotes
Paraphrasing
Unique ideas
Direct Quotes
• If you use someone
else’s writing without
putting it in quotes,
you have blatantly
plagiarized.
• Even if you add the
source in your
bibliography, it is still
plagiarism.
Paraphrasing
• Be careful about rewriting someone else’s
words. If your sentences use many of the
same words and grammatical structure as
the original source, it could be construed as
plagiarism. Just put the text in your own
words.
Original Idea
• Give credit to unique ideas others have
thought up.
• If you present the ideas of another without
crediting them, you have plagiarized them.
• Obvious ideas, like know facts, don’t have
to be credited.
• When in doubt, attribute.
Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism
• Always put quotes
from text in
quotations. Never
forget to do this as this
is the easiest way to
get accused of
plagiarism.
When Paraphrasing…
• Be sure you are not just rearranging or
replacing words.
• Rewrite the phrase in your own words and
credit the original source.
• Double check what you have wrote by
comparing it with the original writing.
Avoid Danger Spots
• Don’t surf to paper
mills.
• Don’t use the Web to
look for “easy’ paper
sources.
• Don’t turn in other
students papers as
your own.
Why do students cheat?
• Some students do not
come to higher
education seeking an
education. Instead,
they want a credential
that will get them a
job. Learning is not a
priority, getting a good
job at graduation is.
This does not relate to my
major...
• Some students resent
having to take courses
not directly tied to
their major. They see
university general
education
requirements as a
waste of their time.
GPA’s
• Many students feel intense pressure to
maintain a high grade point average. This
can come from friends and family. Students
also feel high grades are necessary for
getting a good job or getting into the
graduate program of their choice.
Plagiarized papers are seen as a way of
keeping the GPA high without all the work.
Self-defense
• Other students in the university are
cheating. This may give them an unfair
advantage over students who do not cheat,
particularly if a course is graded on a curve.
Plagiarism in response to the cheating of
others is a way for some students to level
the playing field.
I am too busy to write
• Some students
plagiarize because
they do not have a lot
of free time. They
may be busy with
heavy class loads,
multiple jobs, family
obligations, social
activities, and resume
building experiences.
Ignorance
• Some students
inadvertently
plagiarize from online
sources. They do not
understand all the
rules for properly
using and citing
sources. (“I cited the
web site didn’t I?)
Sources of online plagiarism:
• Paper mills
• Web sites
• Electronic library resources
Paper Mills
“Download Your work load!”
• Schoolsucks.com
(http://www.schoolsucks.com)
• Evil House of Cheats
(http://www.cheathouse.com)
The price for paper mill papers
• Free- Download what you want for free.
The site makes money by selling banner
ads.
• Free but registration is required- The site
makes money from banner ads and from
selling membership lists.
• Give a paper, take a paper- Again, banner
ads provide site with revenue.
More on cost...
• Membership Fee- Pay a fee for unlimited
access to full database of papers.
• Charge by page- “High” cost sites charge
by the page. If you don’t find what you
need, they will custom write your paper for
a stiff fee.
What does the student get?
• Dated material
• Poor writing
• Bad or nonexistent
research
• BUT NOT ALWAYS
Good papers can come
from a variety of sources.
• Old fraternity paper files that have been
digitized.
• Students uploading their own papers.
• Students uploading the papers of others.
This includes papers that faculty make
available to students as examples of good
papers as well as papers that students post
on their own homepages.
Detecting plagiarized papers
• Writing style,
language, vocabulary,
tone, grammar, etc. is
different than what
you expect from the
student.
• Different writing
styles, tones, language,
etc. in different parts
of paper.
Web address on page?
• Check to see if there is
a web address at the
top or the bottom of a
page. This probably
means the paper was
printed with a web
browser directly from
a web site.
Copyright notice?
• Check to see if any copyright notices are
anywhere in the text of the paper. Also
check to see if any notices similar to “this
free paper brought to you by
Schoolsucks.com” appear anywhere in the
paper. Some students do not read through
all the text before turning it in as their own.
Layout
• Is the page strangely or poorly laid out?
This could mean that the text was imported
into a word processor. The imported text
was originally formatted differently and the
conversion changed how the page looks. If
a student does not take the time to fix it, the
page will look odd when printed.
Graphs or charts?
• Does the paper make reference to charts or
graphs that can not be found? Maybe the
originally paper had these items but
subsequent recycling has resulted in the loss
of these items.
Inactive web sites
• The bibliography of the paper lists web sites
that are no longer active. In the months (or
years) since the paper was originally
written, the web site has died or has
changed web addresses.
Dated material
• All of the citations in the bibliography are at
least a few years old. Most databases list
the newest citations first when doing a
search. Students also prefer to use new
material for citing in papers. Old citations
may have been new when the paper was
originally written.
The past is now
• Does the paper make reference to past
events as if they where happening today?
(“I believe that the impeachment hearings
on President Clinton are unfair and are
politically biased. The whole impeachment
process should be stopped now.”)
How to Detect or Google to the
Rescue
• Type in a key sentence from the paper as a
phrase search. For example, type “The
students in my LIB 197 class are good.”
• Google indexes so many sites that even if
the student didn’t use Google, a phrase
search may find the original source anyway.
More Detection
• A good supplement to Google is All the
Web at http://www.alltheweb.com.
• There are commercial vendors as well.
They scan papers against known cheat sites
for a fee. This includes Turnitin.com and
Wordcheck.com.
Plagiarism Can Kill Careers
• Jayson Blair
plagiarized sources.
He also fabricated
stories. In his 20s, he
was at the top of the
journalism world.
Now he is disgraced,
unemployed, and not
yet 30.
The New Republic
• Stephen Glass was a writer for the New
Republic in the 1990s.
• He made up stories by inventing people,
organizations, and events.
• He also plagiarized other writers.
• He was fired and had to go back to school
to find another career. Now he is a
lawyer…