How to Detect Plagiarism |
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Plagiarism is unacceptable academic behavior. The best approach, of course, is to prevent plagiarism from occurring in the first place, but sometimes that is simply impossible. MIT's Policies and Procedures spells out "Procedures for Dealing with Student Academic Dishonesty." In those cases, it is important to be able to detect plagiarism. Warning Signs Unusual phrasings, noticeable unevenness of style (some very sophisticated sentences followed by some amateurish ones), concepts that seem too sophisticated for the level of the class, unclear or incorrect sources listed in the bibliography, a writing style or diction choice in a particular paper that seems inconsistent with that found in other samples of the student's writing -- these are some of the signals that you might be reading a plagiarized paper. One technique to detect plagiarism is to enter an unusual phrase or sentence into a standard search engine (e.g., Google) and see if a match is found. A second technique is holding a conference with the student writer and discussing the paper to determine the student's familiarity with his/her own paper and its concepts. Julie J.C.H. Ryan's article "Student Plagiarism in an Online World" in Prism (December 2001) sponsored by the American Society For Engineering Education offers good advice and several useful links. Dwight Gardner's "Beg, Borrow, Or ..." from Salon.com reminds us that plagiarism occurs in the literary world as well. Kim McMurty's article "e-cheating: Combating a 21st Century Challenge" in The Journal (March 2002) offers some insights into this issue. Detection Tools The following sites offer
tools and techniques for detecting plagiarism.
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