Internet Plagiarism

Internet Plagiarism: Strategies to Deter Academic Misconduct

As more students use the Internet for research, the temptation to plagiarize has greatly increased. Students can refer to any search engine, type in the keywords associated with a topic, and in a matter of seconds, retrieve a number of web sites that offer full text information ready to be copied. Sites such as Researchpaper.com and Term papers-on-file offer an open forum for academic misconduct. Instructors who are confronted with Internet plagiarism often face the burden of trying to locate the evidence as proof that cheating has occurred. Unlike most traditional information resources, the Internet is difficult to search. URLs change daily, information is updated and revised, and some sites disappear altogether. For this reason, strategies must be developed to deter this new form of academic misconduct.

Before we teach our students about plagiarism, it is important to ask the following questions: Is there a written policy distributed to students on academic misconduct? Do students have a clear understanding of what constitutes academic misconduct? What are the procedures by which incidents of plagiarism are handled? Are students permitted to revise their work or are they expelled? Even though most universities have established policies to respond to plagiarism, some instructors do not take time to review this material with their students. Many do not even practice consistency in enforcing these policies. And finally, in most cases, teaching students about plagiarism becomes the sole responsibility of the English Department.

Since plagiarism can occur in any classroom, it is pertinent that all instructors review the existing policy on plagiarism at the beginning of each new term, even if the course they teach is not writing intensive. University policy should first define plagiarism and then offer an explanation on the types of offenses that can be considered forms of academic misconduct. This policy should also include examples of plagiarism paralleled with the corrected forms of citation and a description of the procedures toward resolving incidents of misconduct. Rebecca Moore Howard proposes a model policy in which she includes the following explanation of plagiarism:


An important requirement of most academic writing is acknowledging one's sources. We all work from sources, even when we are being creative. American academic culture demands that writers who use the exact words of a source supply quotation marks at the beginning and end of the quotation, so that the reader can know where the voice of the source begins and ends. In addition, the writer must use footnotes, parenthetical notes, or endnotes to cite the source, so that the reader can consult that source if he or she chooses. Writers must acknowledge the sources not only of words, but also of ideas, insofar as is possible, even when they are not quoting word for word. Moreover, in final-draft writing, academic writers may not paraphrase a source by using its phrases or sentences, with a few changes in grammar or word choice--even when the source is cited begins and ends. (799)

Howard's policy categorizes plagiarism into three areas:


cheating . . . [the act of] borrowing, purchasing, or otherwise obtaining work composed by someone else and submitting it under one's own name . . . Non-attribution . . . "writing own's own paper but including passages copied exactly from the work of another (regardless of whether that work is published or unpublished or whether it comes from a printed or electronic source) . . . [and] patchwriting [which involves the practice of] writing passages that are not copied exactly, but then have been borrowed from another source, with some changes. (799)

Howard notes that in The Bedford Handbook for Writers the definition of patchwriting as "paraphrasing the source's language too closely" (Howard 799; Bedford 477). In addition to descriptions of these three forms of plagiarism, Howard's policy also provides examples of each type of plagiarism and lists the appropriate retribution for each level of academic misconduct. She concludes this policy with advice for both students and faculty who may be confronted with a situation involving academic misconduct and offers guidelines for actions to take in finding a resolution to the matter.

Other examples of plagiarism policies can be found on the Internet. Most university web pages include sections that outline the school's response to academic misconduct. In addition, sites such as Plagiarism on the Internet, the Instructor's Guide to Plagiarism on The Internet, the University of Michigan's Library's Plagiarism page offer sample lessons and articles on plagiarism for instructors to use in their classes. All of these sites provide suggestions on how to identify Internet plagiarism and list links for term paper files.

After establishing a clear understanding of university policy on plagiarism, instructors should review the Internet to investigate the scope of material on the topics they will assign students to research. Instructors who take time to review this material will be more inclined to identify information that has been plagiarized. In addition, we need to teach our students how to evaluate web sites more critically. All too often, the material we believe students have misquoted is actually presented on the web page as the original source. Furthermore, most web pages do not contain citation information we use in traditional sources. Web documents have no page numbers, and in many cases list no author or publication date. Often the content of a web page may be entirely transcribed from another source without proper citation. One quick review of the Internet demonstrates evidence of several examples of this practice. As a result, students may innocently misquote information because they did not know the content on the web page was plagiarized. Most students who are beginning researchers simply do not possess the background or knowledge of primary references to make critical assessments of information. Hence, it is our duty to determine the level of our students' research skills before expecting them to assess the validity of other references.

Once students retrieve information, it is important that we teach them how to cite their references. Although most instructors know how to cite information obtained from print sources, many do not know the procedure for citing electronic sources. If we ourselves do not know how to cite electronic references, then how can we expect our students to do the same? One useful guide instructors can use is Xia Li and Nancy Crane's Guide to Citing Electronic Resources. Excerpts of this guide can be found on a number of web pages, and several sites include examples of electronic citation for students to use. Both the MLA Handbook and APA Manual have web pages that identify the correct citation style for both traditional sources and electronic information. Even the print versions of these manuals include sections devoted to citing electronic materials.

After we teach our students how to cite references, we can lessen the temptation to plagiarize in the way we organize our assignments. One way to reduce Internet plagiarism involves directing and limiting our students' use of the Internet for reference materials. Although we cannot and should not prevent our students from using the Internet, we can pre-select the sources students will use in a given assignment. At the Kent State University Geauga Campus, several instructors place specific items on reserve for student research and provide students with a list of required web sites to examine. Although this procedure may appear restrictive, students learn how to use specific reference materials and compare ways in which their classmates incorporated the same sources into their assignment. By using the identical reference materials, students share the same knowledge which enables them to identify errors in misquoting and paraphrasing. Comparing the use of identical material can be used prior to a more extensive research assignment as a preliminary exercise to teach students how to recognize errors in quoting references.

Another activity that helps students develop their paraphrasing skills is to require them to write summaries without the text in front of them. Instructors can give the students short excerpts of Internet passages to read and summarize. As students read one another's summaries, they can determine whether "patchwriting" has occurred. If it appears that a summary matches the content of the article too closely, then students can be instructed on how to quote a paraphrased passage. For additional practice, students can locate and summarize web sites on their own, but more importantly, they can be asked to critically assess whether these pages are legitimate references. This practice will develop the students' evaluative skills and begin to engage them in the process of systematic thinking that is a skill necessary for the review of research materials.

To illustrate this model, English instructors at the Kent State University Geauga Campus provide a list of the novels, short stories, and other materials on which their students will have to write papers. The library staff then bookmarks all related web sites and gives copies of the links to the instructors. Instructors then have the opportunity to peruse the sites to familiarize themselves with their content. Thus, instructors have immediate access to most of the sources their students may use from the Internet. Since students are aware of this practice, most reconsider plans of plagiarizing with Internet resources.

In addition to bookmarking web sites, the library staff also reiterates the university's policy on plagiarism during bibliographic instruction sessions. Students are given guides on citing electronic references and examples are available in the library. In all English classes, students are required to photocopy and identify the source from which a quotation is taken. These photocopies are then included with the final paper for review. Although some instructors may not wish to burden themselves with this practice, we have found that students document their sources much more carefully when they know that the instructor will examine the original quotation. Furthermore, the art of "patchwriting," a situation in which a student "copies from a source, deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one for one synonym substitutes," decreases immensely (Howard 233). Requiring students to photocopy their sources also enables instructors to evaluate how students selected quotations to support arguments. It is much easier to identify a misquote when the actual source is available for review. Instructors can examine the original context of the quote to teach the students how to apply the quote more effectively. During the research, students are also encouraged to locate additional sites for review. Since it is inevitable that students will navigate the Internet, we allow them to present the material they wish to use to their classmate critics who will either accept or reject the reference as a valid source of information.

If we take the time to instruct our students about the ethics of research and scholarship, chances are, we will have less "accidental" cases of plagiarism. In most situations, plagiarism occurs as a result of ignorance. We cannot assume that our students understand what is expected of them, and so it is important that we reiterate the virtue of academic honesty each time we assign a research project. Students need to understand the significance of ownership in terms of their own written material. Once this concept is mastered, students learn that in their own writing, they possess ownership for a body of work. In turn, they come to understand the meaning of respect for intellectual property because they themselves have participated in its creation.



Source:http://frank.mtsu.edu/~itconf/proceed98/mhricko.html