Question #1

Q : If there is no police or law enforcement in this world, will crime rates go up?

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Question #2Q : A mayor wanted to implement a bus

service in his town with no ticketing system, but using an ‘honest system’. Will it work?

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Plagiarism Prevention : Setting a Level Playing Field

ForResearchers & Students

By Lim Ching, LibraryForce Ltd

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www.libraryforce.com

Plagiarism

About Me

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• Biz Devt Mgr, LibraryForce Ltd• > 8 yrs Higher-Ed content &

library solutions experience• Exclusive Turnitin reseller for 20

countries including S’pore

What is Plagiarism?

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to "plagiarize" means:

1) to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own2) to use (another's production) without crediting the source3) to commit literary theft4) to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

-- As quoted on www.Plagiarism.org

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Why Do People Plagiarize? (1)When students were asked: “Why do you think some students plagiarize?”, they said:

1. Difficulty with the topic2. Poor time management3. Ignorance / inadequate referencing skills4. Laziness5. Ease of getting information from Internet, online resources, etc6. Fear of failure7. Nobody will find out

“Plagiarism is above all symptomatic of lack of engagement with learning.”

Source: “Plagiarism: What’s Really Going On?” By Jeanne Dawson (2004), Curtin University, UK6

Why do kids plagiarize? - According to Robert Harris, the author of Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers, kids plagiarize because they want to finish the work in the least possible amount of time, because the work is not a priority for them, because they procrastinate, because they have poor time and work management skills, and because they have no confidence in their own writing abilities.

Some students, of course, plagiarize because they can, and others really don't know they are plagiarizing.

Why Do People Plagiarize? (2)

Types of Plagiarism (1)

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• “The Ghost Writer”The writer turns in another's work, word-for-word, as his or her own.

• “The Photocopy”The writer copies significant portions of text straight from a single source, without alteration.

• “The Potluck Paper”The writer tries to disguise plagiarism by copying from several different sources, tweaking the sentences to make them fit together while retaining most of the original phrasing.

• “The Poor Disguise”Although the writer has retained the essential content of the source, he or she has altered the paper's appearance slightly by changing key words and phrases.

• “The Labor of Laziness”The writer takes the time to paraphrase most of the paper from other sources and make it all fit together, instead of spending the same effort on original work.

• “The Self-Stealer”The writer "borrows" generously from his or her previous work, violating policies concerning the expectation of originality adopted by most academic institutions.

(Sources not cited)

[Information taken from plagiarism.org]

Types of Plagiarism (2)

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• “The Forgotten Footnote”The writer mentions an author's name for a source, but neglects to include specific information on the location of the material referenced. This often masks other forms of plagiarism by obscuring source locations.

• “The Misinformer”The writer provides inaccurate information regarding the sources, making it impossible to find them.

• “The Too-Perfect Paraphrase”The writer properly cites a source, but neglects to put in quotation marks text that has been copied word-for-word, or close to it. Although attributing the basic ideas to the source, the writer is falsely claiming original presentation and interpretation of the information.

• “The Resourceful Citer”The writer properly cites all sources, paraphrasing and using quotations appropriately. The catch? The paper contains almost no original work! It is sometimes difficult to spot this form of plagiarism because it looks like any other well-researched document.

• “The Perfect Crime”Well, we all know it doesn't exist. In this case, the writer properly quotes and cites sources in some places, but goes on to paraphrase other arguments from those sources without citation. This way, the writer tries to pass off the paraphrased material as his or her own analysis of the cited material.

(Sources cited)

[Information taken from plagiarism.org]

Where Do People Plagiarize?

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• From their Peers

• From World Wide Web (Internet)

• From online Databases (E.g. ProQuest, Emerald, etc)

Ways To Reduce Plagiarism

• Through Education– Long term & on-going, best to start young– Ethically wrong to plagiarize– Inculcate the benefits of citing and giving credits

• More whistle-blowers out there– Not effective, as nobody wants to be the Bad guy– Also, this is not prevention

• ‘Scanner’ to scan your works before submission– Evidence available - Most effective

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Plagiarism Detection Tools

• Many tools in the market today : SafeAssign, Docoloc, Urkund, Ephorus, CopyScape, etc

• We found Turnitin and became their Asia distribution partner in Sep 2007

• Turnitin belongs to iParadigms, a company formed in 1996• To date, Turnitin is the biggest Education tool provider with

>8,500 institutions worldwide and growing…• Of the 8,500 institutions - 4,500 are K-12 schools and

growing…

The Figure Reveal 2 Things…

• Start Young : More and more K-12 schools are seriously looking into Academic Honesty and Plagiarism Prevention

• Network Effect : As more & more users upload more documents, the detection becomes better and will greatly discourage plagiarism

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Network Effect

From Wikipedia : In economics and business, a network effect (also called network externality) is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other users

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Technology is the Key

• “Warning students [or journalists or authors or researchers or anyone else] not to plagiarize, even in the strongest terms, appears not to have had any effect whatsoever. Revealing the use of plagiarism-detection software [Turnitin] to the students prior to completion of an assignment, on the other hand, proved to be a remarkably strong deterrent.”

from: Actions Do Speak Louder than Words: Deterring Plagiarism with the Use of Plagiarism-Detection Software, by Bear F. Braumoeller, Harvard University and Brian J. Gaines, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

‘Speed Camera’ Effect

Key Turnitin Metrics (1)• 130,000 new papers daily• 450,000 instructors – college and secondary

school• 106 countries with multiple languages• Searches against three databases including:

>12 billion pages of web content>10,000 subscription-based periodicals and journals>70 million student papers

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Key Turnitin Metrics (2)

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• 20 million journal articles already...

Association for Computing Machinery, American Society of Neuroradiology, BMJ Publishing Group, Elsevier, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, International Union of Crystallography, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, Sage, Informa UK (Taylor & Francis),Wiley Blackwell.

• Publisher participation growing

Key Turnitin Metrics (3)

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0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Year

Num

ber

of U

sers

— in

thou

sand

s

# Users — in thousands

Poly. (# Users — in thousands)

>15 mil users

The Technology Story

iParadigms’ core technology creates a unique digital fingerprint of a submitted document, compares that digital fingerprint against billions of other digital fingerprints within the company’s partitioned databases of

content, and then generates an Originality Report.19

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MACBETH MANUSCRIPT FROM THE INTERNET (INTRO PARAGRAPH)

Macbeth is presented as a mature man of definitely established character, successful in certain fields of activity and enjoying an enviable reputation. We must not conclude, there, that all his volitions and actions are predictable; Macbeth's character, like any other man's at a given moment, is what is being made out of potentialities plus environment, and no one, not even Macbeth himself, can know all his inordinate self-love whose actions are discovered to be-and no doubt have been for a long time-determined mainly by an inordinate desire for some temporal or mutable good.

SAME MANUSCRIPT WITH MODIFIED WORDS

Macbeth is shown as an empowered man of well-established character, prosperous in several fields of life and enjoying an esteemed reputation. We mustn't conclude, therefore, that all of his volitions and actions will be foreseeable ; Macbeth's essence , like most other men at any given time, is what's being created out of potentialities and his environment, and no one, not even Macbeth himself, can discern all his immoderate self-love whose behaviors are found to be-and without doubt have been for some time-determined primarily by an extreme desire for a temporal or changeable good.

Detection of Word Substitution or Alteration

PAPER A MACBETH INTERNET DERIVED PAPER (INTRO PARAGRAPH)

Macbeth is presented as a mature man of definitely established character, successful in certain fields of activity and enjoying an enviable reputation. We must not conclude, there, that all his volitions and actions are predictable; Macbeth's character, like any other man's at a given moment, is what is being made out of potentialities plus environment, and no one, not even Macbeth himself, can know all his inordinate self-love whose actions are discovered to be-and no doubt have been for a long time-determined mainly by an inordinate desire for some temporal or mutable good.

PAPER A + B

MACBETH MODIFIED TEST PAPER WITH COMBINED ADDED CONTENT

Shakespeare's famous play, Macbeth, is one of his great tragedies based around the classic theme of the hero's fatal flaw. Macbeth is presented as a mature man of definitely established character, successful in certain fields of activity and enjoying an enviable reputation. Yet, like any man, he is human, and thus in possession of flaw and foibles, hidden that they may be from public eye, and hinted at by foreshadow only by the author. We must not conclude, there, that all his volitions and actions are predictable; Macbeth's character, like any other man's at a given moment, is what is being made out of potentialities plus environment, and no one, not even Macbeth himself, can know all his inordinate self-love whose actions are discovered to be-and no doubt have been for a long time- determined mainly by an inordinate desire for some temporal or mutable good. This desire being so strong under certain circumstances as to override all others, even, as is usually the case in tragedy, the ultimate desire of self-preservation.

Detection of Sentence or Paragraph Addition

Aug. 2008 vs. Aug. 2007

Aug. 2008 Aug. 2007 Notes

Student Papers (Total in DB)

61,961,958 39,276,568

Submissions this month 1,374,793 968,351

Active Classes (HE) 60,745 54,379

Active Classes (SE) 32,408 34,160

Active Students (HE) 1,100,627 1,147,634

Active Students (SE) 587,389 682,327

GradeMark Papers 27,617 17,723

OR Turnaround 2.36 min 8.44 min

Help Desk Tickets 4,053 3,079 Spike due to new dynamic site launch in US, EU & Canada

Known Users Trained 415 unknown

Originality Report

With An Originality Report

Without any report:Hey, Student : I think you’ve plagiarized?Reply To Professor : No, I did notReply to Student : Yes, you did..No, I did not, … Yes, you did…, No, I did not…

With an originality report:Hey, Student : How do you explain this?...Reply To Professor : Er….. Actually ….er…

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Under one minute23%

Under two minutes27%

Under 10 minutes13%

Under three minutes15%

Under five minutes16%

More than half an hour1%

Under half an hour2%Under 15 minutes

3%

Turnitin Performance Metrics — May 2008Turnitin is Fast!

What a US Judge says?

U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton said that "though iParadigms makes a profit in providing this service to educational institutions, its use of student works adds "a further purpose or different character" to the works." Such "transformative" works do not violate fair use. Further, because student works become part of the database against which other students' work is compared, Turnitin helps protect the papers from being exploited by others who might profitably claim them as their own work.

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Emerging Forms Of Plagiarism

• Online visual/graphical works : Hard to detect and search

• In China : Translate English papers to Chinese and submitting as his/her own works

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Oxford Uni. Case Study

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Hong Kong Uni. Case Study

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NUS Case Study

http://emodule.nus.edu.sg/ac/launch.htm

Credits1. www.plagiarism.org2. www.turnitin.com3. http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/clip/k-bus.html4. http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/clip/policebadge.html5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

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Question #1

Q : If there is no police or law enforcement in this world, will crime rates go up?

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Outcome : Yes, crime rates will go up, as there is nobody watching and no arrest

Question #2Q : A mayor wanted to implement a bus

service in his town with no ticketing system, but using an ‘honest system’. Will it work?

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Outcome : Gradually, few or no one pays, this ‘Free Rider’ system fails as more & more think they can take for free and get away. Or he/she thinks if I don’t pay, nobody knows.

Conclusion

As the Internet & Databases continue to grow and newer technologies enable rapid dissemination of information, institutions need good plagiarism prevention tool to scan students’ work. This will uphold the credibility as well as integrity of the certificates which the institution is awarding.

At the same time, it also set a level playing field for all researchers and students

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