Internet Plagiarism

Throughout the past two decades the amount of information available to students on the Internet has grown to staggering proportions. Long gone are the many hours spent in the library making copies of articles and journals. Now, in the comfort of your home and with the click of the mouse, all the information a student needs to write a paper is at their fingertips. Herein lies the problem. There is far too much information available on the Internet for university faculty and staff to effectively monitor plagiarism. As technology grows to check student assignments for plagiarism, so too does the tactics that students employ to plagiarize without getting caught. Plagiarism has become an epidemic throughout campuses across the world and as more that is understood why a how student do the easier it will be to combat.

Before we can fully understand the problem of Internet plagiarism we must first define it. Wikepedia (n.d.) describes plagiarism as “the practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgement”. It seems like a clear cut definition, but in the realm of the internet the task of controlling it is daunting. It can be as simple as paraphrasing text and not citing it correctly or blatently copying and pasting acrticles from web pages to use as your own work. Specific definitions vary from school to school, even when it comes to the amount of sequential words lifted from the original document (Murray, 2002). Over the past few years, many schools have altered their official ethics policies to cope with this problem.

Understanding what plagiarism is a task in itself but understanding why students do it is the core of the problem. Despite the consequensices of plagiarism which include embarresment, a failing course grade, and ultimatlty expulsion, students continue to knowingly do it. Poor time management skills are often given as the main reason for student plagiarism (Irons & Alexander, 2002). Last minute panic sets in and the only option that they give themselves is plagiarism. Students sometimes feel the need plagiarize when they do not comprehend a specific assignment. Instead of asking the appropriate questions to understand the topic they take the easy way out. The most un-nerving reason for plagiarism is that the student can (Irons & Alexander, 2002). Students understand that it very difficult and time consuming for faculty to detect and prove plagiarism. This fact gives the student confidence they will not get caught.

According to Scholastic.com, “A national survey released in May 2001 by the Center for Academic Integrity found that 52 percent of high school students admitted to copying text from a Web site and including it in their written work without citing the source. Incredibly, a total of 72 percent of students admitted to some form of plagiarism on written assignments, and 74 percent admitted to cheating on tests.” These are outstanding numbers if you look at just high school students alone. According to Alex P. Kellog, “Another study performed in 2002 asked 698 undergraduate students how often they plagiarized. In this study, only 24.5 percent admitted to having cut and pasted text from the Internet without proper citation. Interestingly, more than 90 percent of the undergraduates reported that their peers were probably doing the same.”

Although it is difficult to prove plagiarism, new strategies are being utilized and up-to-date technology is available to faculty staff to combat this problem. Some professors will set parameters in which research can be conducted (Murray, 2002). For instance, a professor might ask students to only use a specific Internet database or a specific set of journals for an assignment. This limits the amount of information that a student can utilize and plagiarism is detected easier. Another strategy is for students to submit all references and highlight all specific texts used in the assignment (Murray, 2002). This strategy forces the student to properly quote, paraphrase, and cite works.

Many professors and entire universities have turned to online “plagiarism checkers”. These sophisticated pay websites scan the assignment for plagiarism through a massive database of articles, journals, books, periodicals, web pages, and previously submitted papers. One of these sites, www.turnitin.com, not only checks for plagiarism but give a detailed report regarding the paper in question. It also offers comprehensive training for their tools for all of their online tools.

Many students use paid paper, and essay, writing services available online. This is one form of writing that is considered the easy way out. Although they are using these services, no one can truly say whether this is considered plagiarism or not. Most of these types of websites boast “100% plagiarism checks” or they can guarantee that the paper is not plagiarized. But what is it considered if different students use the same service to write their paper? Is it now considered plagiarism because those two students turned in the same paper by the