The Problem

  Hidden Statistics

  Three Source Areas

  Why a Problem?

  Surveys

  Paper Mills

 


test

  The Internet
  Published Material
  Student Material

What these areas have in common is that they contain a vast and ever growing number of sources. This means that if there are no tell- tale signs of where to search for an original source, it is all but impossible for a teacher to find it or to be sure the document is ok.

The Internet

The Internet contains billions of pages with varying content, from material published by universities and colleges to government material, newspaper articles, books and more. There are also commercial "cheat sites" that provide ready-made documents.

IIf a student has plagiarized from an Internet source one would think it to be easy to find the source with a common search engine, but this is not necessarily so. Firstly, parts of the Internet are only found behind passwords. Therefore it is not possible to find it with a search engine. Instead one needs to obtain access to each individual system, which may be free or require a fee.

Secondly, there are a large number of search engines available, each with its own coverage of the Internet. It may be necessary to use the same path the student took i.e. the same engine and the same search criteria.

T hirdly, there is a large amount of material on the Internet that can’t be found with a search engine. Password protected sites apart there are also compressed files (.zip. arj. Lhz etc) that has to be decompressed by the teacher to be searchable.
Published Material
This area is made up of hundreds of millions of books, encyclopedias, scientific articles etc. Some are available electronically via certain databases, others exist only in printed versions. The vast amount of material available entails that if a suspicion of plagiarism is all you have, and if you have no particular idea of where the original might be found , it is all but impossible to find the source.

Student Material
Plagiarism does of course also occur between students. Examples of this are plagiarizing from someone that took the course earlier, at the same school or elsewhere, or copying eachother when working together (allowed or not) on a paper. Student produced documents are generally unpublished. Therefore they can’t be found on neither the Internet or among published material.
                                                   
                                                                                 Why a Problem? >>