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According to a recent study, most students plagiarize from textbooks and other student
writing more than from web resources and sites (JISC, p. 4). With this in mind, an
instructor should consider the usefulness of detection tools in the overall scheme of
their curriculum and instruction. This guide specifically, and detection tools in general,
should be used within a comprehensive program to prevent student plagiarism and foster
academic integrity. Such a program begins with re-evaluating course assignments,
understanding your campus policies regarding student academic integrity, student
copyright, and plagiarism. The Virtual Academic Integrity Laboratory at UMUC provides
tools that assist in developing a comprehensive approach to plagiarism prevention.
Some limitations of detection tools that you should consider are:
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Books are typically not searched by these services; they can only search
or compare student work with material that exists in an electronic format. |
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Detection services and tools detect plagiarized words, not plagiarized
thoughts or ideas. |
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Many, if not all of the available self-titled
"plagiarism checkers," "detection tools," or
"detection services" cannot access subscription literature databases (e.g. Lexis-Nexis,
Proquest, Ebscohost) or subscription web sites. |
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A positive indication of plagiarism means only a beginning. For various
reasons, submissions marked as "plagiarized" may not be actual cases of
plagiarism. |
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A negative search result may not be conclusive; the source text may not
be within the search parameters of the detection tool being used. In addition, faculty
must decide what to do with any identified plagiarized text strings.
- Is it blatant
"cut and paste plagiarism"?
- Or is it simply a student who failed to learn how to
paraphrase properly?
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