Plagiarism

Plagiarism refers to the use of another's information, language, or writing, when done without proper acknowledgment of the original source. Essential to an act of plagiarism is an element of dishonesty in attempting to pass off the plagiarised work as original. Plagiarism is not necessarily the same as copyright infringement, which occurs when one violates copyright law. Like most terms from the area of intellectual property, plagiarism is a concept of the modern age and not really applicable to medieval or ancient works. An example of plagiarism would be copying this definition and pasting straight into a report.

Plagiarism and the Internet

The widespread use of the Internet has increased the incidence of plagiarism. Students are able to use search engines to locate information on a wide range of topics. Once located, this information can be cut-and-pasted into their own documents with minimal effort. The size of the Internet makes it difficult for teachers to trace the source of plagiarised material.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There are also websites which provide complete essays for students to download. These websites provide a database of subject-specific topics; some provide custom-made essays on any topic (for a fee). Some of the largest fee-based term paper sites are: * MyEssays.com, Valedictorian Essays, Tailored Essays, Go2Essay, Fast Papers, AcaDemon, Custom Research Papers, EssayToday, Essay Town and Research Assistance.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Internet can also be used to combat plagiarism. Teachers can use search engines to search for parts of suspicious essays. Using search engines to check papers for plagiarism, however, is neither practical nor effective since teachers lack the time necessary to check each paper by hand using an online search engine. For this reason, many teachers have turned to plagiarism prevention services like Turnitin that automate the search process and check essays for plagiarised material by comparing each paper against millions of online sources. The techniques used in such engines are often based on variants of the Rabin-Karp string search algorithm. Despite these counteractions, some empirical evidence suggests that the overall effect of the Internet is to increase plagiarism. Oddly enough, MyEssays.com offers a free online essay scanning utility to detect plagiarism in essays available on the Internet.

Related Topics:
Turnitin - Rabin-Karp string search algorithm

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~