By Robert Salonga
Daily Bruin Staff
Several UC campuses have embraced software developed at UC
Berkeley that allows faculty to detect Internet plagiarism.
The most widespread detection software available is
TurnItIn.com, an Internet service that cross-references the paper
in question with other Web sites and papers in its online database
““ which increases in size with each paper submitted. Whereas
faculty members used to type a lengthy passage into a search engine
to detect suspected cheating, the service can find a case of
plagiarism based on a few words.
“We want to put in measures that prevent students from
feeling at a disadvantage for not plagiarizing,” said Arlene
Russell, a senior UCLA lecturer in education, chemistry and
biochemistry.
Several UCs have licenses with TurnItIn.com, including Berkeley,
Davis, Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Cruz, all of which are in
trial phases. Other national campuses are currently in the
contracting process.
According to UC officials, at Davis, plagiarism cases doubled
between 1994 and 2000 from 70 to 142, and cases at Berkeley
increased between 1999 and 2001 from 32 to 44.
At UC Irvine, there were about 100 cases during the 2000-2001
academic year. Additionally, the percentage of Internet-related
plagiarism has been on the rise in recent years.
“I’ve even seen plagiarism in ethics courses,”
Russell said.
TurnItIn.com was originally known as Plagiarism.org in 1995. It
was created by John Barrie, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, who
found that students were plagiarizing from papers posted on the
class Web site.
Barrie created a program that would match papers with those
previously submitted, and eventually expanded it to online term
paper sites, which sell other students’ works.
Jeanne Wilson, director of student judicial affairs at Davis,
said the huge database of TurnItIn.com makes it less economical for
term paper sites to do business, since their material is eventually
found by or added to the detection database.
To use TurnItIn.com, students must upload papers directly to the
Web site, at which point the papers undergo the detection process.
The service then creates an originality report, which highlights
instances of possible plagiarism or incorrect citing.
Students can revise their papers for a period of 24 hours
following the initial submission. After this point, it is
considered a final draft ready for critical review by the
professor, who is the only one with access to the papers.
Before the inception of Web-related detection services, faculty
members used their intuition to suspect plagiarism, according to
Wayne Creager, a case administrator at UC Berkeley who handles
plagiarism issues for the university.
Professors often looked for unique language and terms that seem
out of place.
“If a student doing C-level work suddenly turns in a
brilliant A paper, it’s an indication that something suspect
is possibly going on,” Creager said.
Despite the benefits of the service in detecting possible
plagiarism, whether or not the student is accused has always rested
in the hands of the professor.
“Professors have the final discretion,” said
Creager. “The service isn’t telling us what to
do.”
Robert Newsome, associate dean of undergraduate education at
Irvine, emphasized the service’s value as being more
preventative than anything else.
“Our goal is not to catch people, but to dissuade students
that this is not the right thing to do,” Newsome said.
“If students are aware that a program is in place,
they’re much less likely to do it.”