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Information Literacy: Preventing and Detecting Plagiarism

An introduction to Information Literacy and how Staley Library works to develop information literate students.

Preventing and Detecting Plagiarism : A Faculty Guide

As you are aware, plagiarism is an increasing problem on college campuses, in many cases as an apparent direct result of the Internet's ability to provide access to not only large amounts of information but also entire research and term papers. Not all of the downloaded papers lead to plagiarism, but many do.

On this page we have collected some information to help faculty members prevent, detect, and deal with plagiarism. This includes links to sites at other universities that address the same topics. A site such as Indiana University's Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It also helps students recognize what is and what is not plagiarism, something which they do not always understand.

Additionally, we provide a few links to term paper sites, to show you what is available. The term paper sites include prewritten and "made to order" options, book reports, theatre and movie reviews. A perhaps unexpected source of material for plagiarism comes from college and university professors who post their own work and writing on the Internet.

Sites that will assist you in detecting whether or not a paper is a plagiarized have been developed in response to the availability of term paper sites; and we provide links to some of those as well.

If we can be of further assistance to you in the library with regard to this topic, please let us know!

Plagiarism Information and Prevention Sites

Term Paper Download Sites

Internet Paper Mills A list of many sites where papers can be either downloaded or purchased. Originally hosted at Coastal Carolina University, this list is older, but still gives you an idea of the range of sites that are offering this "service."

Articles

Discouraging Plagiarism

  • Avoid having students simply find answers. Encourage students to do their own thinking, not paraphrase the thinking of someone else. What are their thoughts and ideas on a given topic?
  • Ask questions which require students to make an inquiry or investigation.
  • Have students compile and turn in working bibliographies well in advance of term paper dates. This will require students to begin research at an early date, avoiding the temptation for last minute information downloads.
  • Have students maintain a research log. This will note the databases and indexes searched, search dates, keywords and subjects used, and a summary of search results.

Identifying Plagiarized Papers

If you suspect that prevention hasn't worked, detection is next.

  • Ask the student to recreate portions of the paper and see how closely this matches the syntax and sentence structure included in the paper in question.
  • Use search engines. Entering a four to eight word, distinctive phrase in a full text search engine will often yield the source of the plagiarism. Be sure to use the proper search techniques for locating phrases.
    Note: "entering phrases within quotation marks" works with most search engines the same way as using the "this exact phrase" box in the Advanced Search option.
  • Search any of the full text databases available at Staley Library.
  • Look for vocabulary not commonly used in this particular class.
  • Look at the citations included. Are they all from sources not available in our library or from another country? Are they outdated?
  • Look for statements at the end of the paper that acknowledge a source for the paper.
  • Look for unusual formatting, either a change in fonts or the formatting itself.