Plagiarism -- Prevention and Detection

Investigation | Additional Resources

The age-old issue of plagiarism has become magnified in an era of copy-and-paste technology. The resources presented on this page are designed to assist faculty at Baylor University in preventing and dealing with plagiarism activities. The information on this page is summarized from a column written by Billie Peterson_Lugo in the September 2002 issue of the Library Instruction Round Table Newsletter.

NOTE: Baylor University is currently subscribed to the TurnItIn Plagiarism detection/prevention service.

Prevention

Faculty are in the best position to prevent plagiarism. They control the information distributed in the classroom and the nature of the assignments. Educate the students about plagiarism and then develop assignments that are "plagiarism resistant":

• Define plagiarism to students, don't assume they know what constitutes plagiarism;
• Work with students on the proper citation of sources (see Citing Information Resources);
• Use plagiarism tutorials or quizzes (see below for some examples);
• Copyright and Plagiarism Tutorials (Rochester Institute of Technology)
• Indiana Plagiarism Tutorial (Indiana University)
• Lemonade Plagiarism Tutorial (University of Southern Florida)
• Plagiarism -- What Is It? (Bournemouth University)
• Plagiarism Tutorial (North Carolina State University)
• Roig's Plagiarism Knowledge Survey
• Plagiarism and Academic Integrity at Rutgers University (Rutgers University, New Brunswick Campus)
• Pilot Information Literacy Tutorial: Module 6 Citations and Plagiarism (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
• Require very narrow, specific topics (less likely to be in Internet paper mills);
• Require current resources in bibliographies (bibliographies in papers from Internet paper mills tend to be less current);
• Emphasize the process of writing by requiring oral presentations and class discussions of proposals, outlines, working bibliographies, multiple drafts, meetings to discuss progress, etc. scheduled throughout the course;
• Require photocopies and printouts of the source material;
• Require in-class writing exercises, for example, on the paper due date, have each student write a brief essay on his/her research experience, what worked, what didn't work, etc.;
• Demonstrate knowledge about the existence of Internet paper mills, perhaps by using poorly written papers obtained from paper mills to discuss good writing techniques;
• Use research assignments other than term papers (see "Alternatives to Term Papers" provided by Columbia Gorge Community College for ideas);
• Look at McKenzie's "The New Plagiarism: Seven Antidotes to Prevent Highway Robbery in an Electronic Age".

Detection

Even with prevention measures in place, plagiarism will not be eradicated. So the next step is detection and investigation. Frequently faculty detect inconsistencies that lead them to suspect plagiarism, such as:

• Language and grammar that is too sophisticated for the student;
• Inconsistencies throughout a paper with reagard to language and grammar;
  
• Mixed font styles and sizes (as if a student copied and pasted from different online texts and didn't make the font consistent;
  
• Resources unavailable in the library listed in the bibliography (however, in light of high-quality interlibrary loan services, this may not be a valid suspicion);
  
• A bibliographic citation style that doesn't match the one specified (Chicago Manual of Style instead of the MLA);
• A paper doesn't meet specified requirements (topic not on target, too long, specified resources clearly not used, etc.)