From Download
your Workload to the Evil House of Cheat:
Cybercheating, Plagiarism, and
Intellectual Property Theft
Theresa Gillis and Janeanne Rockwell-Kincanon
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Much has been written in the last few years on the proliferation of term paper mills on the Internet, which raise to new heights the fraternity paper files and other old fashioned ways of plagiarizing. The sites—such as SchoolSucks, Evil House of Cheat, and Collegiate Care—vary in pricing schemes, the extent of the collections, and their stated purposes. Many are blatant and belligerent about what they are peddling; others couch their services in thinly-veiled language of altruism and instruction. The Writer's Coach (an unnamed soul who lacks any definite affiliation but who claims to "have taught economics, history, sociology, philosophy, politics, literature, and a few more in the capacious halls of the Liberal Arts") offers "research guidance" by email and "model papers" (listed with a description, the number of pages, and the price). An ironic choice for one of Collegiate Care's recommended books in December was Been There, Should've Done That: 505 Tips for Making the Most of College. There is even an online equivalent of the faithful friend who writes the paper for you when none can be found to fit the assignment—except that this friend takes Visa or Mastercard for $13-35 per custom page. Besides the paper mills, the web in general can be a source for a potential plagiarist, since professors use the medium to publish their own works and occasionally the work of their students. Students may plagiarize intentionally from these posted writings, or they may plagiarize unintentionally under the impression that all web resources are in the public domain. A very purposeful method of high tech cheating is the use of translation software. Plagiarists can search for a topic on the web and limit the search to a specific language or country of origin. They can then use translation software to render it into English. Since machine-generated translations still tend to be clunky, clever plagiarists will wordsmith the text.
Recently, several varieties of Internet software have been developed to help faculty detect plagiarized papers. A group of Berkeley researchers and alumni developed Plagiarism.org, which has a database of "tens of thousands" of online academic papers, mined both from term paper mills and from Internet search engines. When a paper is tested through Plagiarism.org, it is "fingerprinted" and given an originality score in comparison with the papers in the database. Other Internet detection products include the Essay Verification Engine (EVE) and IntegriGuard, both of which search for matching phrases on the Internet. The Glatt Plagiarism Screening Program does not identify the source(s) of plagiarism, but instead employs a linguistic approach to detection. Based on the assumption that we each have unique writing styles and that we naturally know our own style best, the Glatt system replaces every fifth word of the paper with a blank and determines the Plagiarism Probability Score based on the student's accuracy and speed in replacing those words. As with any technology, however, these plagiarism detection products have an Achilles' heel. Their strengths are in finding instances of direct plagiarism, that is, a word-for-word lifting from an original source. The weakness is in detecting the more sophisticated plagiarist-one who knows enough to lift the ideas from the original without using the original words or key phrases. Papers translated with Internet translation software are also currently undetectable for these programs, but a program could be developed to undo a translation (as long as it doesn't translate a second time, which would render any paper totally indecipherable).
Techniques for preventing students from using term paper mills remain mostly low tech and traditional, with a little boost from the high tech world. The traditional approach, which professors used before the advent of cyberplagiarism, includes structuring the assignment so that topics are very narrow or highly specific, as well as focusing on the research process rather than simply the end product. The first of these approaches reduces the chances of a student finding an appropriate online paper by eliminating broadly-defined assignments such as "research an educational movement in the United States." The second approach includes awarding points for successfully completing the various stages of research in addition to the final paper. The disinclination of many faculty to use these approaches is likely due to: 1) their own broad interest in the subject matter (and their assumption and hope of a similar curiosity in their students, and 2) a lack of time. Another prevention technique that could be used when plagiarism was still low tech (and which can still work) is mandating that a particular format or organization be used in the paper. One example is the requirement of an annotated bibliography; since few online papers include annotations, the pilfering student would have to go to considerable lengths to adequately meet the requirements of the assignment. Even though these traditional approaches to preventing plagiarism are still viable, technology allows faculty to present an added deterrent to would-be plagiarists. There cannot be a technologically-based prevention technique against plagiarism, but alerting students to the fact that detection software exists and that it can and will be used when deemed necessary may provide a psychologically-based prevention of it. Because of the respect and trust that many undergraduates hold for all things Internet, the prospect of being "found out" by it should be more threatening than that of the professor recognizing a lifted passage or complete paper.
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Updated (minimally) 29 September 2002
Original date March 2000: jrk