Plagiarism Guide
Plagiarism
is an increasing problem on college campuses. The Web and online
library databases provide college students with easy access
to vast amounts of information written on every conceivable
topic. In addition, "paper mill" sites provide students
with complete papers for a fee. This page includes information
to help faculty members prevent, detect, and deal with plagiarism
here at Kutztown University as well as links to recommended
web resources and online articles. In addition, we provide links
to several "paper mill" sites to show what's available.
These sites include prewritten and "made to order"
options, book reports, and entertainment reviews. In response
to these online "paper mills," a number of sites have
been developed to assist teachers in detecting whether a paper
has been plagiarized. This page includes links to several of
these sites. Please note: Most plagiarism detection sites charge
a fee. The librarians are committed to assisting faculty in
combating plagiarism. If you have questions about any of the
resources listed, please contact us.
Table of Content
Tips to discourage plagiarism:
Make
students' aware of KU's Academic
Honest Policy
Include
a statement on plagiarism in your syllabus.
Consider
approving or assigning unique topics that require students
to do their own thinking. Avoid very common or popular
topics.
Explain
the dangers of committing plagiarism as part of making
your assignments.
Educate
students about plagiarism. Often students don't even realize
that they are committing it. Some excellent resources
include:
Plagiarism:
What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It (Indiana
University). Includes examples and strategies.
Avoiding
Plagiarism (Purdue University). Shows circumstances when
documentation is necessary. Includes a plagiarism exercise.
Have
students compile and turn in working bibliographies well
in advance of paper due dates. This will require students
to begin research at an early date, avoiding the temptation
for last minute information downloads.
Have
students maintain a research log. This log will note the
resources used (including web sites, books, databases),
search dates and search strategies used (including keywords
and subjects), and a summary of search results.
Identifying plagiarized papers
If
you suspect that prevention hasn't worked, detection is
your next step.
Ask
the student to recreate portions of the paper and see
how closely this matches the syntax and sentence structure
included in the paper in question.
Try
searching some phrases from the paper using the Google
search engine. Google provides a comprehensive search
of free Internet sites. Try several searches using distinctive
four to eight word phrases (make sure to enclose phrases
in quotation marks). Note: Google will not search fee-based
"paper mill" sites. You can try searching using
one of the plagiarism detection sites listed below (these
sites often offer free trials).
Search
the library's full-text databases. These databases provide
students with access to thousands upon thousands of full-text
magazine, journal, and newspaper articles as well as full-text
articles from online reference books. Our most popular
full-text databases include:
Look for vocabulary not commonly used in a particular
class.
Look
at the citations included. Are they all from sources not
available in our library or from another country? Are
they outdated?
Look
for statements at the end of the paper that acknowledge
a source for the paper.
Look
for unusual formatting, either a change in fonts or the
formatting itself.
Plagiarism information and prevention sites
Plagiarism identification sites
All of these commercial sites charge for their services. However,
many of these offer free trials.
QuickStart Guide for Turnitin at Kutztown (pdf)
Kutztown
University provides access to Turnitin.com's
anti-plagiarism services. This guide helps you get started.
Contact Will Jefferson, site administrator, at 610-683-4757,
wjeffers@kutztown.edu if you have
questions.
Plagiarism.org
Instructors
register with plagiarism.org and upload student papers.
Search is conducted to match phrases with papers in
its database of digital materials.
Glatt Plagiarism Services
Includes
three software programs including one to teach students
about plagiarism, a plagiarism detection screen, and a
self-detection program.
IntegriGuard
Matches
downloaded students' papers against its database and searches
the Internet to detect examples of plagiarism.
Essay
Verification Site (EVE)
"accepts
essays in plain text format and returns links to web pages
from which a student may have plagiarized."
Paper Mill Sites
Articles and Resources
Site
adapted from Preventing
and Detecting Plagiarism, Stanley Library, Millikan
University
