The tool you choose to identify plagiarized student work will vary from one situation
to another. Are you looking for a resource to be used by one faculty member, an entire
academic department, or the entire institution? The type of plagiarism your faculty
encounters most often may also affect the choice of tool.
| Does your institution feel that students are recycling
work from one semester to another? |
 |
In this case, a tool that detects collusion and
re-cycling would serve you better. |
|
| Are your faculty concerned that their students are
careless using electronic resources? |
|
A tool that searches online resources would fill this
need. |
|
| Do you or your faculty have both of the
above concerns? |
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While there are several tools available that attempt to
meet both of these needs, these tools may be cost prohibitive in some situations. |
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Online or Remotely Located Search Tools and Services
Online search tools are great for detecting plagiarized text that has been taken from a
web source and used without attribution or what's becoming commonly referred to as
"cut & paste" plagiarism. Many of these products function as advanced search
engines that attempt to match the questionable text to words or phrases from the Internet
such as public web pages, paper mills, etc. Although a few detection services are no
longer available (Digital Integrity, How Original.com, Paperbin.com), others are currently
under development (Match Retrieval Development, Edutie.com).
Stand-alone Desktop Software
There are several software programs currently available to assist in detecting collusion
in student course work; instances where students within one class or over several
semesters or years may have re-cycled the same work or are working too closely together.
The premise is that with this software you can collect student work from your personal
classes, academic department, etc., and use the software to seek out linguistic
similarities in student assignments. Currently there is software available for
textual-plagiarism detection and detection in computer code for computer science courses.
Web Search Engines and Other Web Resources
In addition to being a tool for seeking general content on the World Wide Web,
several Internet search engines are effective detection tools for "cut &
paste" plagiarism that may have originated from the WWW.
Subscription Databases
Because subscription databases of scholarly and popular literature are a standard resource
for academic research, it also a common source of plagiarized text. Content in databases
that offer abstracts or the full-text of articles, is often inappropriately used by
students. These databases should be considered when an instructor knowingly assigned
students to find scholarly sources in the fee-based research databases to which their
institution subscribes.
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