Prevention vs. Detection

There is no easy way to search for plagiarized papers on the World Wide Web. Professors have had some success using the procedures outlined below, but these procedures are far from foolproof.

Keep in mind that preventing plagiarism is far easier and more pleasant than detecting and proving it. Confronting a student with an accusation of plagiarism is often an unsatisfactory experience.

Full Text Databases
The Libraries have 34 full-text databases of newspaper, magazine, journal articles and full-text books. Blocking, copying and pasting articles from these sources is simple.

To find a plagiarized article or a paragraph that seems to be an uncited direct quote follow these steps:
If the paper is on a general topic, a social problem, or the humanities, begin your search in one of our large, general databases.

Expanded Academic ASAP
Academic Search Premiere
Opposing Viewpoints
SIRS

If the paper is subject specific, begin your search in a subject database.

Literature Research Center
PsychARTICLES
History Resource Center US, etc.

You may have to search more than one database.

The EBSCO databases may be cross searched simultaneously. This will soon be true of the Infotrac databases.

Select a telling phrase from the paper, the longer the better. 6-10 words are about right. You may combine phrases by using the Boolean and command.

Search the phrase in a keyword search as a bound phrase, i.e. enclosed in quotation marks.
Be sure to tell the computer to search the complete text of the document.

Examples

In Expanded Academic ASAP , the default or opening search is a Keyword Search. Put the telling phrase in quotation marks, be sure to check the "Search for Words in Entire Article Content" box, and limit your search to Full Text by checking the appropriate box.

In Sirs Researcher , select Keyword/Natural Language search by clicking the appropriate button. Sirs only searches full text unless directed otherwise.

In Academic Search Premier, keyword is the default search, click on "search within full-text articles." and limit results to full-text articles.

In National Newspapers, go to the advanced search by clicking the “Advanced Search” tab; use the pull down menus to select full text. Limit results to full text articles.

The Visible Web

The Visible Web is what most people think of the World Wide Web. It consists of a zillion or so available public Web sites that can be searched by major search engines such as Google.

It's probably a good idea to begin by using a meta-search engine, one that accesses many search engines at the same time.

Mamma
www.mamma.com is excellent, very fast, and allows you to search for two or more phrases at a time. Enclose phrases in quotation marks, and put the Boolean operator AND between them.

Dogpile.
www.dogpile.com Dogpile is another meta-search engine. It indicates which Web pages are found only by a particular search engine.

Use a Phrase From the First Paragraph
Assume the plagiarist is lazy and stole from the top of the document. Beginning sentences are useful for this purpose because search engines sometimes include them in their abstracts of web sites.

Use an Odd Phrase From the Body of the Paper
Our young scholar might have lifted material from the middle or end of a Web page. This makes searching somewhat more difficult because you must determine which phrase will not generate 500,000 or so hits. It's probably a good idea to use the phrases that set your personal alarm bells ringing in the first place as your search.

Term paper mills
There are many term paper mills, some are free, some charge for papers. Some Web sites have lists of term paper sites. Please be aware that these lists may be dated and not comprehensive.

“Internet Paper Mills" http://www.coastal.edu/library/presentations/papermil.html

“Internet Subject Specific Paper Mills" http://www.coastal.edu/library/presentations/mills5.html

“Paper Mill Web Site Directory” www.thejournal.com/magazine/mcmurtry/
This site has a short list but provides quick access to the free term paper sites most likely used by students.

Although students are likely to use the free sites, some may have paid for term papers. Please be aware that those papers are either e-mailed or snail mailed to students and will not be found on the Web.

The Invisible Web
The Invisible Web is that part of the Web not covered by general Search Engines. The Invisible Web contains a lot of valuable information, but cannot be readily searched. The documents themselves are not on the Web, but rather on an institution's computer. Such documents only become available on the Web when a person searches the particular Web site to find data. Examples of such sites would be ERIC, MEDLINE, encyclopedias, dictionaries, government documents etc.

It is unlikely that students will use data from the Invisible Web as resources for research papers, but it is not impossible. Specialized search engines for the Invisible Web exist. See www.invisible-web.net for a directory of many of them. Hunting for a particular Web page using specialized search engines will be an exercise in patience and perseverance.

Commercial Plagiarism Identification Sites
Web cheating is so endemic that commercial services offer to check term papers against their databases of Web resources and paper mills. Fees are relatively modest.

Essay Verification Site (EVE 2) http://www.canexus.com/eve/index.shtml
Glatt Plagiarism Services www.plagiarism.com
TurnItIn.Com www.turnitin.com

A survey done at Colorado College found that TurnItIn found 93% of free term papers and 50% of sold term papers. Google did almost as well, finding 88% of free papers and 42% of sold term papers.

TurnItIn has consistently had the best record of detecting plagiarized papers of the commercial plagiarism services. It is important to note though that TurnItIn is not a panacea. The service does not search magazine, journal and newspaper articles found in library databases. It will not catch false citations, made up information and the like. It cannot detect copying from print sources.

What can a professor do if searching is unsuccessful?

Give the student a chance to prove that the paper is not plagiarized.

Quiz the student and see if he or she can define some of the words in the paper. A question such as: “Why did you use ‘egregious' here?” can be enlightening.

Copy some sentences from the paper and leave blanks for some important words. If the student cannot fill in the blanks with the word used in the paper itself or a synonym, the student did not write the paper.

Ask questions about one of the sources used in the paper. “This article by X looks fascinating, why did you choose it? Can I see a copy?

Ask the student how he or she searched for the information. Ask what index they used.

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