Plagiarism is known as a form of literary dishonesty, otherwise known to college students as cheating. It is looked down upon highly by academics and it carries with it many serious consequences. Over the past five years, the Internet has emerged as a cheater’s dream and a professor’s worst nightmare. It’s because of a variety of web sites that give students access to entire papers for a nominal fee and sometimes even for free.
As a result of the widening accessibility of the Internet, as well as the new medium’s lack of regulation, a student can click a few computer buttons and in a matter of minutes, they can download a well-crafted term paper without having to pick up a single book. It seems as though the Internet has totally changed the meaning of the word ‘research. ’
Plagiarism can formally be defined as: repeating the author’s sentences as your own; adopting a particularly apt phrase as your own; paraphrasing someone else’s argument as your own; presenting someone else’s link of thinking in the development of a thesis as though it were your own (Modern Language Association). Although a writer may use another’s words and thoughts, they must be acknowledged as such. The act of plagiarism in school is nothing new. In the days before the Internet, plagiarism occurred in colleges and universities across the country in the form of Cliffs Notes.
Cliffs Notes, formed in 1958 by a Lincoln, Nebraska Company presents summaries of many works of literature (The Associated Press). Professors found that students were often reading these summaries instead of reading the entire works. Students then plagiarized these summaries to prepare term papers. Some universities, such as Villanova, have even decided to ban Cliffs Notes from being used within the University. However, Cliffs Notes were not as easily accessible as the Internet is. Now all the work of research and even Cliffs Notes has been replaced with simple online search engines and cut-and-paste word-processing tools.
Previously, a large number of people were able to resist the temptation. Now the Internet is everywhere. Students can find themselves easily signing online at 2am to buy term papers. It’s much harder to resist the temptation because it is far more convenient than going to the book store. Ready-made term papers have become enticing to students seeking a lazy alternative to real school work. Sadly, many students do not feel the same sense of guilt when they obtain papers from the Internet (Cina).
We are raising a generation of students who think that anything on the Internet is free and they should not give a thought to documenting them (Renard). It seems as though the “free stuff” attitude of Internet users has made students think that stealing research is more acceptable. Internet plagiarism has simply evolved into an institution, a pillar of education, a big study group and an endless archive of cut-and-paste essay components (Fritz). We are now faced with three types of Internet cheaters. The first, the unintentional cheater never learned how to properly use and document resources.
These cheaters will usually admit their wrongdoing because they don’t understand the alternative. A second type of cheater is the sneaky cheater. These students know what plagiarism is and that it is wrong, but they also know how to get away with it, so they plagiarize portions from research sites and portions from other student papers online. The all-or-nothing cheaters are students who wait too long before starting term papers and panic at the last minutes. These students often find the whole paper on the Internet, add their names, print it, and turn it in for a grade.
This is the laziest form of Internet cheating and it is the easiest to detect (Renard). Term paper “mills” are nothing new, but their growth has exploded on the Internet. Perhaps this is due to the “Term Paper Blues” ads that are being run in the back of Rolling Stone magazine by “Research Assistance” (Wice). This new way to take credit for someone else’s work is particularly alarming because of the ease of which they can be obtained (Byrd). There is a rapid growth of sites operated by money-hungry entrepreneurs willing to make a quick buck by promoting plagiarism.
Countless sites offer papers from anywhere from no cost to as high as $100 for a custom written paper complete with bibliography (Raphael). Unfortunately, the experience gained from the struggle to research and write a well-developed paper is an extremely valuable component of a solid education and is lost when obtaining papers from the Internet. Students who submit recycled papers are not only plagiarizing the words and ideas of others, but they are also robbing themselves of their own intellect. In the long run, those who choose the more challenging path will reap the greater reward.
Even a superficial search of the Internet reveals dozens of sites that offer “term paper assistance” (Byrd). It was alarming to see how many paper plagiarism sites were found within just a few short minutes of searching through google. com. Sites like “papersunlimited. com”, “cheater. com”, and “screwschool. com” offer easy-to-download papers on thousands of research topics (google. com). Chuck Mullins, chief executive officer and creator of CollegeTermPapers. com which launched in 1999, has reported that his site receives approximately 175,000 hits per day (Cina).
This is an astonishing figure. A major problem is that anyone with a major credit card can access and download research papers. They’re so easily available. For a reasonable price, they can buy a paper, revise it to fit their own needs and turn it in as their own. It’s a natural combination: students have computers, credit cards and a desire to avoid having to write their own term papers (Cassino). As a result, many students now equate research paper assignments with a monetary value as opposed to long hours of research.
Donald McCabe, a Rutgers University professor who studies cheating, has conducted studies indicating that nearly 70% of students plagiarized in college (Fritz). Cheaters are rarely ever even caught. Professors only catch on if they have seen the paper before or if two students are unlucky enough to hand in the same paper. Unfortunately, most professors rarely take the time to check the credibility of the sources or the uniqueness of the paper (Cassino). They are reluctant to put the effort into researching whether a paper’s been plagiarized.
As a result, academically, there is not a lot of plagiarism reported because by nature, academics are nonconfrontational. A 1999 survey of students on 21 campuses nationwide found that of schools with stringent honor codes, 45% had committed at least one of the four serious cheating offenses (plagiarism, falsifying a bibliography, turning in someone else’s work or omitting footnotes and citations). Schools without these honor codes reported 56%, the highest proportion (Karasik). Some states have begun to pass legislation aimed at prohibiting the marketing or sale of prefabricated term papers.
In fact, seventeen states, including Texas and Massachusetts, have recently passed laws making it illegal to sell papers that students may pass off as their own work. Colleges and universities are also beginning to fight back, and rightfully so. With greater student reliance on computers in academia, many colleges and universities are challenged to keep pace with the dishonest, who have found new ways to plagiarize their course work. Educators must implement proactive approaches in the teaching and prevention of such behavior.
The University of Pennsylvania is currently educating its faculty, teaching assistants, and instructors to recognize plagiarism. They have circulated memos to train faculty how to search for key terms to verify that sources came from other sources than students’ own words. Professors at Yale University are also being given training on how to detect computer-aided plagiarism (Boas). These incidents usually occur among Computer Science (CS) majors in which they copy large portions of programs, or even programs in their entireties, and then pass them off as their own work.
In 1997, Boston University (BU) encountered its first computer-based cheating scandal. During a summer session, it was discovered that several students attempted to pass off papers downloaded from the Internet as their own. As a result, BU hired a paralegal to pose as a university student and requested a term paper on Toni Morrison’s Beloved from multiple Internet sites (Boas). Several of these Internet paper mills sent neatly printed papers that were ready to be turned in. One company even offered to put the student’s name, professor’s name and course number on the cover sheet.
Upon receipt, BU filed a federal lawsuit against eight Internet term paper companies in seven different states. They claimed that these companies devalue the university’s degree programs. The lawsuit alleges wire fraud, mail fraud and racketeering. It seeks a court order barring the companies from doing business in Massachusetts (USA Today). Luckily for professors, just as the Internet has made it possible for students to buy ready-made term papers online, it is now being used by universities to help rat out these plagiarizers.
Professors and other academics are now turning to anti-plagiarism web sites such as “plagiarism. org” and “findsame. com” that promise to analyze a term paper and deduce whether parts of it or all of it have been lifted from a previously written work (Karasik). These sites are in direct response to Internet paper mills. The only problem is that at a cost of up to $1 per paper, in a class of 100-200 students, this cost can get very high pretty quickly.
Even when professors do decide to use this method, unfortunately sometimes the detection procedure is not very accurate. Users must be very careful and cautious before charging a student with plagiarizing. In some cases, these sites may detect plagiarism in cases where it is clearly the student’s own thoughts and thinking. This is true as in the case of Andy Dehnart who tested his 30-page thesis on one of these sites and found that it stated his entire paper was plagiarized when in fact it was all unique.
Andy realized that the service had discovered a copy of his own thesis online. Instead of realizing that it was his own work and ignoring it, the service had accused him of plagiarizing (Dehnart). Although he took the time to investigate the report’s charges, what if a professor hadn’t? Professors must be very cautious when using such services. Perhaps professors should place more emphasis on teaching students about academic dishonesty instead of punishing them for doing so. They should explain the importance of learning.
If professors are going to be given the edge by using anti-plagiarism websites, students should also have the ability to make corrections when they inadvertently plagiarize. It seems as though the best way to correct this problem of Internet plagiarism is to have students hand in a few steps of the research process along the way, such as an outline, a thesis statement, rough drafts, or an annotated bibliography. However, with the Internet growing at such high speeds, unfortunately these may soon be available on the world wide web as well.