Web Plagiarism is Easy, but is also Easier to Detect
Beg January 2014
Katie Hamer - New York Times Service, Jury 2001
1.
A student at Spring Lake Park High School outside Minneapolis said he had a
formatting problem: The margins on the research paper he was trying to print out for an
English class this spring were not aligning correctly. But when he complained to Jane
Prestebak, a librarian whose duties include running the school's computer lab, she
immediately suspected the actual cause. Ms. Prestebak took the first five words of the text and
put them in a search engine. Up came the Web site from which the student had taken the
paper in its entirety, margin formatting and all. She alerted the student's teacher, who decided
to turn the incident into a lesson in ethics.
2.
Plagiarism was already there even before the coming of technology but
plagiarism is one of the bad things that technology made much worse. The rapid
development of the Internet along with increasing computer literacy has made it easy
and tempting for everyone to copy someone else’s work and paste it into their own.
Hundreds of sites offer essays and research papers on a wide variety of topics -- some at no
charge. E-mail has made it simpler for students to borrow from one another's work.
Plagiarism is now a burning issue in the education, industry, and research communities
(Spafford, 2011). For example, one group of researchers estimated up to 90% of
students in high schools are involved in different kinds of plagiarism (Jensen, Arnett,
Feldman, & Cauffman, 2002). Other research has shown that students with extensive
exposure to the Internet are more inclined to be engaged in copy-paste practices
(Underwood & Szabo, 2003).
3.
Donald McCabe, a management professor at Rutgers University who conducts
periodic surveys on cheating at college campuses, recently surveyed 4,500 high school
students at 25 schools around the country. When it comes to plagiarizing from the Web, he
found that more than half the high school students surveyed admitted either
downloading a paper from a Web site or copying a few sentences from a Web site without
bothering to cite the source. On the college level, Mr. McCabe said, just 10 to 20 percent
of those surveyed acknowledged such practices.
4. Often, certain clues make teachers suspicious. "If a student hasn't done any homework or
research, then suddenly submits a completed paper, that's a sign," said Cathy Aubrecht, an
English teacher at Hononegah High School in Rockton, Illinois. At other times, the problem
presents itself in a more subtle fashion. "I have kids every year who have a hard time
understanding that ideas can be plagiarized as well," she said. 'If you get a good idea
from some place, or a concept is related to you via a book or Internet site, it needs to be
recognized. But they assume that everything is public domain."
5. Mr. McCabe said he was deeply concerned about the cavalier -- arrogant attitude -toward plagiarism among high school students. "Many say, "We're way ahead of our
teachers when it comes to the Internet," Mr. McCabe said. “And they say”, “Everybody's
doing it."
6. In high school, however, the consequences are not as grave as in college. High school
students who are caught cheating are usually given a stern lecture or, at worst, a failing grade.
On rare occasions, seniors will not be allowed to graduate. College students caught
plagiarizing, especially at institutions with strict honor codes, are often suspended and may
even be expelled, Mr. McCabe said.
7. The Web, in addition to providing opportunities for plagiarism, has made it much easier to
detect plagiarism. Here are web tools that facilitate the detection of plagiarism:

Plagtracker will instantly start scanning all internet pages and more than 20 million academic
works for any plagiarized copy. After the scan is over (it normally takes a minute or two) you will
then be provided with a detailed report containing information about sections of the scan that
needs to be cited and list of sources.

Grammarily This one here offers besides a grammar checker and spelling checker a very good
plagiarism checker. This plagiarism checker not only identifies plagiarism, but also offers
corrections for it. The plagiarism check automatically generates references in three formats,
quickly and easily, making it a helpful tool for writers who work with or discuss other works.

DupliChecker: This is a completely free tool for the professional, a student, or a newbie.
Copy paste, or upload your content file containing essay, thesis, website content or articles,
and click 'search', and you get the analysis reports within seconds. Each sentence is
dissected, and all the source websites from where the content was copied are displayed.

Article Checker checks for plagiarized articles. It is very simple to use and does not require any
software download or installation. It is all web based, just paste your text in the box provided
and hit compare.

Viper is fast becoming the plagiarism checker of choice, with over 10 billion resources scanned
and an easy interface which highlights potential areas of plagiarism in your work. Best of all, it's
free! Just keep in mind that it requires a download.

Dustbull Plagiarism Checker does not require any download or installation. Just paste in the
text in the box provided for you and there you go.

Copyscape is dedicated to protecting your valuable content online. It provides the world's most
powerful and most popular online plagiarism detection solutions.

PaperRater.com is a free resource, developed and maintained by linguistics professionals and
graduate students. PaperRater.com is used by schools and universities in over 46 countries to
help students improve their writing. It has a great tool to check for plagiarism.

Docs Detective is mainly a plagiarism checker for Google Docs.

Plagium is a free to use service that allows users to track their plagiarised work and documents.

Turnitin.com offers a simple method that allows both teachers and students to submit
papers to electronic scrutiny. The service compares the paper against millions of
Web sites, as well as a database of previous submission. It also compares the paper
against those offered by the so-called term-paper mills. Turnitin.com then sends a report
with the results to the teacher. High schools using this service pay around $1,000 a year for an
unlimited number of submissions. Colleges pay roughly $2,000.
John Barrie, a founder of Turnitin.com, estimates that of all the work submitted to the
site; nearly one-third is copied in whole or in part from another source.
He says that about 1,000 institutions subscribe to the service: 60 percent are high schools
and the rest are colleges.
8. Such services are surprisingly effective, especially as a deterrent. A chemistry lecturer at the
University of California at Los Angeles, Steven Hardinger, said he has students submit their
own papers to Turnitin.com with the results sent to him. "The use of Tumitin.com as a deterrent
is perhaps much more valuable than as a way to ferret out plagiarism," Mr. Hardinger said. "We
really hate to see plagiarists and hate to punish them, but we want them to know we're
watching."
9.
He went on to say he saw a more disquieting problem associated with youthful plagiarists
-- what he calls "mental softness." Students are caught up in a cut-and-paste mentality that
relates to an old belief that longer is better. They're confusing the size of their pile, of what
they've accumulated, with wisdom. Instead of finding the right stuff, they're just finding lots of
stuff. "They don't think of it as cheating. "They are simply collecting information and don't
understand the whole concept of intellectual property."
10.
Even when caught, many high school students are relatively blasé about their
transgression. Peter Mehas, superintendent of schools in Fresno County, California, blames
parents for this attitude, at least in part. Each spring, he receives about 200 calls from parents,
asking why someone's little darling isn't graduating. Mr. Mehas said, "In the cases where the
child has been caught plagiarizing, what I hear is, 'Well, it's really not cheating, he just didn't cite
all the sources.' Mr. Mehas stands firm on his decision to deny graduation to plagiarists. "It
blows your mind when you see within some of the high schools four or five term papers that are
exactly the same," he said.
Web Plagiarism - Comprehension Questions
1. According to the title, the web has an advantage as well as a disadvantage regarding
plagiarism.
a. What is the advantage? __________________________________
b. What is the disadvantage?_________________________________
2.
Paragraph 1
a. What was the student’s formatting problem?
___________________________________________________
b. As soon as the librarian heard the student’s ______________, she
________________something wrong. She entered ____________into
the search and got to the _______________________ the paper had
been taken from.
c. How did the student work on his research paper?
i. He had partially taken it from the Internet.
ii. He was pressing “Cut” and “Paste” buttons on his computer.
iii. He only borrowed ideas from the web site.
iv. He took the Internet research paper unchanged.
d. Who treated the incident as an ethical problem?
________________________________ (THREE words)
3. Paragraph 2
a. Circle the correct word in the following sentence:
“The degree of Internet literacy seems to be in inverse proportion to age”
means: the older people are, the more / less they know about the web.
a. The author calls plagiarism _______________________ and defines it as
___________________________________________ .
b. Plagiarizing is always free of charge.
True / False
Quote from the text to support your answer.
___________________________________________________________
4. Paragraphs 3-4
a. Complete the following sentence (ONE - TWO words in each space)
The research shows that the problem is _____________ serious in
colleges than in ____________________.
b. Give evidence from the text.
______________________________________________________
c. Which two signs made teachers suspect plagiarism?
i.____________________________________________________
ii.____________________________________________________
5.
List the forms of plagiarism. (Paragraphs 3 and 4)
a.___________________________________________________
b.___________________________________________________
c.___________________________________________________
6. Paragraph 4-5
a. If an idea is “public domain”
i. you may use it as it is, since it expresses public opinion.
ii. you may use it freely without citing where it came from.
iii. you must cite its source.
iv. you cannot use it because it does not belong to you.
b. What “cavalier attitude” is the author referring to?
__________________________________________________
7. What can cheating at college result in?
_______________________________________________________________
8. How is paragraph 7 related to paragraph 6?
a. It repeats what was said in paragraph 6.
b. It questions what was said in paragraph 6.
c. It expands on paragraph 6.
d. Paragraphs 7 and 6 present contrasting ideas.
9. Paragraph 7 raises the issue of ________________________________________.
10. How does “Turnitin.com.” work?
_________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
11. Plagiarism is associated with “mental softness”.
Complete the following sentence according to paragraph 9.
(No more than FOUR words in each space)
“Mentally soft” students look for ___________________________ instead of
____________________ and are sure it is __________________ .
12. Students’ and parents’ attitude to plagiarism is the same / different.
Support your answer by quoting students’ and parents’ opinions.
(Paragraphs 5 and 10)
Students: “________________________________________________”
Parents: “_________________________________________________”
13. The article ends with a very strong recommendation concerning students who copy.
It is _____________________________. (No more than FIVE words)
14. The main idea of the article is:
a. More developed web services are needed to detect plagiarism.
b. Web plagiarism is a serious problem only in colleges.
c. The Web can also be used to catch the plagiarists.
d. There are no students who do not plagiarize.
Vocabulary
Find the words which mean the same as:
Para 1
arrange in straight line
- ______________
real
- ______________
able to read , do , work on - ______________
Para 2
Para 3
Para 5
warn
- ______________
rules of behaviour
- ______________
reversed order
- ______________
do a report
- ______________
meet
- ______________
at no price
- ______________
do a report
- ______________
mention
- ______________
by way of
- ______________
worried
- ______________
area of knowledge that belongs to everybody - _____________
serious
- ______________
Para 6
Para 7
ban a person from being a member
- ______________
send a person away for doing wrong
- ______________
give
- ______________
find out
- ______________
put forward for a mark ( opinion )
Para 8
Para 9
- ______________
detailed examination
- ______________
calculate
- ______________
pay regularly for
- ______________
find by searching
- ______________
material
- ______________