Don Jones
Plagiarism in a Digital Age
I wish I could say I’m happy to
have you at this workshop, but it is unfortunate that there’s even the need for
this gathering. However, before we lament too much, it is important to remember
that plagiarism is not a recent phenomenon. The word plagiarism dates back to
an accusation by one Roman poet that another had stolen some of his poems and
tried to enslave them. The Latin word for abduct and enslave is plagiarius;
hence, our word “plagiarism,” meaning to abduct and enslave the words of
another. It’s also true that students have been purchasing academic papers long
before web based paper mills were ever created. As David Russell explains,
there were well known “literary gentlemen” who were hired to write papers for
some students at Harvard during the 19th century (320). However, web based plagiarism does represent
a new challenge for us to confront, and it is increasing at an alarming rate.
One study has found that the percentage of students who admit to committing
some form of plagiarism has increased from 10% in 1999 to 41% in 2001 (Price
par. 5).
If you are attending this workshop, you
probably have dealt with at least one disturbing case of plagiarism. Can a few
of you describe some of the most troubling cases of plagiarism you have dealt
with recently?
It
is rather easy to detect and catch this kind of plagiarism. For an example, visit the RLC website at http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/rlc, and select
Research Strategies àAcademic Honesty versus Plagiarism àAcademic Honesty versus Blatant Copying.
If you suspect that a student has engaged
in some blatant copying:
Search engines like Google do not cover
more than about a third of the free, visible web so you may need to use more
than one of search engine. Google
also cannot detect plagiarism from non-electronic, meaning print only, sources,
but most blatant student plagiarists don’t ever enter the library to locate a
book to copy!
Sometime
students plagiarize due to sloppy note taking.
To see an example, visit the RLC website at http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/rlc, and select
Research Strategies à Academic Honesty versus Plagiarism à Plagiarism by Sloppy Note-Taking.
To
help students avoid this possibly unintentional plagiarism, it is helpful to
review what kinds of information do and do not need to be cited. Refer to “Research Strategies: Citing Sources
Properly” located at http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/rlc/citingsources.html.
A
third more subtle and more deliberate form of plagiarism is based on lifting
sentences from one source, slightly changing them, and then combining them with
slightly altered sentences from other sources. This form of plagiarism has several names,
such as cut and paste plagiarism or patchwork plagiarism, and it is more
difficult to detect. Here are two examples from the previous paper on teacher
tenure:
Student:
Tenure is becoming more and more outmoded.
Source: Is tenure becoming and outmoded
concept that stands in the way of sound educational policy?
Student: Tenure was created to protect
teachers from being fired at the whim of
the administration.
Source: Is tenure an essential means of
protecting teachers from arbitrary and
capricious actions on the part of
administrators and school boards?
Now
this type of plagiarism is much harder to detect because if you search with Google
with the student’s exact phrasing, no matches will be found. However, if you
search for tenure and outmoded without the quotation marks, you may find the
original source.
In
fact in this fortunate example, it is the first source listed from www.psparents.net/Teacher%20Tenure.htm. Do a Google search for tenure and outmoded -
without quotation marks.
Given
the array of sources located by Google, now imagine a student opening several
of these sources and cutting and pasting certain paragraphs together while
slightly altering some phrases to create a patchwork text.
Many
students who deliberately commit patchwork plagiarism often make it easy to
detect. The student of the teacher tenure paper occasionally cited her sources
so when I read through the texts of the work cited list, I found the slightly
altered sentences that had been cut and pasted into the student’s paper. Thus,
this was deliberate but dumb plagiarism. Students who wait to the last minute,
then panic and commit patchwork plagiarism often will reveal their own
excessive reliance on several sources.
Unlike
students who panic after procrastination, there are other students who plan to
plagiarize as soon as they receive an assignment. I would like to believe that
these students represent a small minority, but they are most unethical
plagiarists. These students calmly and callously plagiarize by purchasing or
trading for entire papers. Just as there were file cabinets filled with papers and
exams in some Animal House fraternities, there now are digital sites for
obtaining papers. Here are three sites whose names make their cynical
intentions explicit:
Papers for sale: www.schoolsucks.com
Papers for trade: www.cheathouse.com
The
trading of papers is also flourishing on the internet.
Go
to www.cheathouse.com and search for a
paper within your particular discipline
We,
however can transform these sites into a teachable moment of close reading and
critical thinking. Open the RLC Website
at http://uhaweb.hartford.edu and
select Research Strategies à Academic
Honesty versus Plagiarism à Plagiarism by
Tutoring and the Internet. Have students
read the disclaimer from Schoolsucks.com
Fortunately,
in addition to Google, there are many free and commercial sites that we can use
to detect these forms of plagiarism:
Free sites: www.northernlight.com
Commercial Sites: www.turnitin.com
Using
Blackboard, we can require students to submit an electronic copy of their
papers in a digital dropbox and check every paper for possible plagiarism using
a site like turnitin.com. Many American colleges are relying on turnitin.com to
detect plagiarism; however, in a recent court case in
It’s
tempting to treat plagiarism as a cat and mouse game of pursuit and capture,
but this punitive approach ignores the reasons why student commit plagiarism
and the reasons are as varied as the forms of plagiarism. Without being as
cynical as the students who purchase or trade papers digitally, can you
consider what makes some college students resort to plagiarism, especially the
first three forms? After examining how students plagiarize, can we consider why
they do so?
1.
Sheer ignorance of how to write using cited
sources and why they are cited.
Due to excessive teaching loads, high
stakes mastery exams, and rampant plagiarism by high school students, fewer
research papers are being assigned by high school teachers: “Across the
country, high school English and social studies teachers have cut back or
simply abandoned the traditional term paper” (Hayasaki par. 5).
2.
Poor time management so procrastination leads to
panicked plagiarism. When students feel
overwhelmed by assignments, some will take “the shortest route possible through
a course” (Harris par. 3).
3.
Fear that their writing abilities do not
adequate to the task assigned. If students think they are not equal to the
task, some will “look for a superior product.” These students, however, are the
least able to discern the great gap between their own writing and patchwork
plagiarism as well as the poor quality of many purchased or traded papers (Harris par. 6).
4.
Disinterest in an assigned topic or a required
course. Students who are not committed to a topic or an entire course are more
likely to want to “get by” and then rationalize that “everyone is doing it,”
even Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jayson Blair!
5.
Belief that the internet is a public space
without any personal right to intellectual property; the “Napster Effect.”
If
plagiarism is caused by ignorance and inadequacy as much as dishonesty and
laziness, we can transform an apparently punitive situation (“cite or else”)
into a productive teaching moment. However to do so, we must emphasize
prevention more than detection. What are some of the strategies you use to
prevent plagiarism?
To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world
which doing its best, night and day, to make you like everyone else—means to
fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight. – ee cummings
Many of the students who come to my
classes have been trained to collect facts; they act as if their primary job is
to accumulate enough authorities. . . . They most often disappear behind the
weight and permanence of their borrowed words, moving their pens, mouthing the
words of others, allowing sources to speak through them unquestioned,
unexamined. . . . [I want them to learn to bring] their judgments to bear on
what they read and write, learning that they never leave themselves behind even
when they write academic essays. –
The long run costs to business from inept
writing have been estimated in the millions in slowed productivity, confused
instructions, inexact reports, and defaulted contracts. The costs to
individuals in diminished confidence, blasted hopes, and unfulfilled ambitions
are incalculable. – Pearl Aldrich
In
the last hour, I have been able to present an overview on plagiarism, but there
are many more resources available to you on this campus. In addition to the RLC
web site, the library offers an extensive guide for students called the
“Information Skills Tutorial” on the home page of the library (go to http://library.hartford.edu/llr ) as
well as comprehensive list of sources at
http://library.hartford.edu/llr
/services/plagweb.htm – see Faculty Services and Plagiarism Web
Sources. Finally, I would like to thank
Kitty Tynan for suggesting some of the sources I have cited during this
presentation.
Alphonso,
Carol. “Student Rebel Beats McGill in Essay Fight.” http://globeandmail/servlet/story (
Harrris,
Robert. “Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers.” http:www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm
(
Hayasaki,
Erika. “2 Rs Left in Nigh School.”
Price,
Monica. “Plagiarism Violations Drop 40 Percent.” http://www.arbiteronline.com/vnews/display
(
Russell,
David. Writing in the Academic Disciplines.
Contact Kitty Tynan, Head of
Reference Services in Mortensen Library, for additional information.
Note that these services are
listed for informational purposes only. We have not evaluated any of them, and
do not imply opinions on any by their inclusion or exclusion.