Online plagiarism

Online plagiarism

 by

Tun Min

Introduction

With a boost in information and communication technology (ICT) nowadays, there are more and more ICT-based educational practices. Such a development has also been coupled with benefits and risks. Disputably one of the prominent risks in the academic circle these days seems to be that easy access to the Internet, one of the essential ICT tools, has helped more individuals plagiarise (Baggaley & Spencer, 2006; Morgan & Vaughn, 2015; Howard & Davies, 2009; Townley & Parsell, 2005; Embleton & Helfer, 2007). This article first presents the definition of ‘online plagiarism’ along with the term ‘plagiarism.’ Next, it describes why students plagiarize. Then it discusses how it impacts students, teachers and educational institutions. Finally, it suggests how education system of a particular country can do to solve it and how the present author as an educator intends to solve the problem.

‘Plagiarism’ and ‘online plagiarism’

            According to Plagiarism.org, the term plagiarism refers to “the reproduction or appropriation of someone else's work without proper attribution” or “passing off as one's own the work of someone else”. It has two components: (1) taking “the words, work, or ideas from a source, and (2) no attribution given to the source in using “the words, work, or ideas” (Anderson & Steneck, 2011, p.90). An author characterized plagiarism as: (1) directly copying four lines (or more); (2) poorly-paraphrased four lines (or more); (3) evidence without citations; (4) lack of full reference for the evidence; and (5) any combination of them (Rolfe, 2011, p.703).

The phrase ‘online plagiarism’ means a recent kind of plagiarism by means of online assistance in which individuals do academic misconduct such as cutting and pasting text, falsifying references, using pilfered papers and submitting other’s work as their own ones (Stanton & Neal, 2011, p.62). Online plagiarism is also referred to as “cyber-plagiarism” (Scanlon, 2003, p.161), “Internet plagiarism” (Howard, 2007; Suarez & Martin, 2001), and “cyber-cheating” (Sterngold, 2004, p.16). If plagiarism and online plagiarism are comparatively viewed, the latter is much more complicated than the former, and so is much more difficult to resolve.

Reasons for students’ plagiarism

            Students plagiarize for several reasons. Students are said to cheat owing to their laziness, weak morality, or negligence of rules (Sterngold, 2004, p.19). However, a close research analysis on plagiarism in Evering & Moorman (2012, p.38) shows that students plagiarize because of: (1) insufficient sense of integrity; (2) need of maturity; (3) unawareness of online ethical practices; (4) little experience with a specific kind of writing; (5) little interest in the assignment; (6) peers’ plagiarism affecting them; and (7) desire to get or maintain high grades. Sterngold (2004, p.19) asserts that traditional teaching also practices invite online plagiarism nowadays. It is a fact that even post-graduate adults plagiarize because they want to get good grades (Jocoy & DiBiase, 2006, p.6).

           

Impacts of online plagiarism on students, teachers and educational institutions

            It is common knowledge that the new version of plagiarism that has increased almost ubiquitously in this digital age has had great impact on students, teachers and educational institutions. Regarding its impact on students, online plagiarism can affect and pervade many students. According to Fischer and Zigmond (2011, p.100), there are generally two kinds of plagiarists: (1) those who plagiarise deliberately, and (2) those who plagiarise unintentionally. Although the second group tend to plagiarise because of their poor knowledge or skills in writing, or their carelessness, the first group seem to rely on online materials for their assignments. While the second group can be easily caught, it is difficult to catch the second group.

The most significant impact of online plagiarism is that it allows individuals to do such an academically dishonest conduct easily and quickly in several ways. Ten ways of online plagiarism listed in order of severity by Turnitin.com are detailed and thorough. They are: (1) clone (turning in other’s work exactly as one’s own); (2) CTRL-C (copying a large part of text from others’ work); (3) find-replace (changing key words with essential things intact); (4) remix (paraphrases from different material, pieced together); (5) recycle (self-plagiarising); (6) hybrid (using other texts with and without citations); (7) mashup (combines copied text from different sources); (8) 404 error (contains false unsearchable citations); (9) aggregator (contains appropriate citations, without originality); and (10) re-tweet (contains appropriate citations but uses almost identical original wording and/or grammar forms). According to Embleton and Helfer (2007, p.23) students commit online plagiarism because they often think their teachers will not know their misconduct.

The second impact of Internet plagiarism on students is seen in the case of pilfered papers. Morgan and Vaughn (2010) differentiate paper mills from online writing assistance services (OWAS) papers by mentioning that the former are “repositories of previously submitted student papers” and the latter are “original texts written by ghostwriters for profit” (p.755). Students with academic dishonesty buy papers from such paper mills and OWAS sites, especially the papers from the latter, which are “guaranteed to be undetected” (Morgan and Vaughn, 2010, p.757). Therefore, it has become a serious issue for the educational institutions.

With reference to the impact of online plagiarism on teachers, there seem to be three significant points they should consider and put into practice. Firstly, teachers need to update their teaching methods and assessment means in order to engage students and encourage them to do their own work. Instead of using traditional teacher-centred instruction, it would be better engaging to the students to use learning-centred teaching methods and to put into practice plagiarism-preventive assessment tasks. Sterngold (2004) also recommends updating teaching methods and proposes several effective “plagiarism-prevention strategies” (pp.18-20). Secondly, they need to update their knowledge and skills in tackling with plagiarism-related matters. At the same time, advanced technology and emerging social phenomena also seem to make them responsible for keeping students fully aware of plagiarism, how to avoid it, and punishments for plagiarists. Thirdly, with a high possibility of online plagiarism among higher education students come the teachers’ responsibilities to be extremely careful in assessing the students’ works and detecting plagiarism.

Concerning the effect of Internet plagiarism on educational institutions, four related factors appear important in this digital age. First, as online plagiarism is on the rise (Embleton & Helfer, 2007, p.25), it is essential to ensure that higher educational institutions like colleges and universities maintain their good reputation. However, as Devlin (2006, p.45) points out, most universities tend to keep their plagiarism cases secret in fear of degrading their dignity. Second, colleges and universities need to make sure that they keep and better students’ quality by formulating sound plagiarism-preventive policy. Third, the high likelihood of Internet-enhanced plagiarism among students in colleges and universities make it necessary to use plagiarism-detecting services like Turnitin.com to help combat students’ academic misconduct. Fourth, increasing online plagiarism asks for urgent proactive and preventive measures like effectively rendering plagiarism education, to be taken by higher education institutions.

Solutions for online plagiarism

            For educational system as a whole, online plagiarism can be solved in four ways. One way of solving this issue is to make rigorous punishment policy for plagiarists. Such a policy has high potential for making sure that students have considerable academic integrity for their work. However, the policy has to be supported by the use of the Internet and useful services. Therefore, the second way of solving the issue is to have educational institutions use a specific plagiarism-detecting service (PDS) like Turnitin.com for checking plagiarised texts and giving appropriate penalty for the plagiarists according to the policy. Although Turnitin.com, the most popular PDS, has some weaknesses including its inability to identify some OWAS papers, it can be considered to be reliable as it can help detect the majority of plagiarised works efficiently as evidenced by some researchers (Marsh, 2004; Rolfe, 2011; Buckley & Cowap, 2013). However, several scholars argue that detecting and punishing the plagiarists can result in other problems such as protestations of some students who cheat (Baggaley & Spencer, 2005; Morgan & Vaughn, 2010). The third and most important solution for online plagiarism seem to be that students are educated by a theoretical and practical approach about the meaning of plagiarism, how to avoid it, and penalties for plagiarists, and encourage them to keep strong academic integrity. Online plagiarism tutorials like the one described in Stanton and Neal (2011) can be a useful plagiarism-educating device for the institutions. In order to prevent plagiarism in a proactive manner, Evering and Moorman (2012, p.39-41) suggests two-step approach: (1) to “create a culture of academic integrity, and (2) to provide students with plagiarism education. The fourth viable solution is to ensure that all of the faculty who are also the most important persons in higher education institutions are trained to be fully aware of and responsible for plagiarism themselves.

            As an educator, the writer thinks that at least three major solutions will work for the issue of online plagiarism. First, myriads of online resources and services that are available to students nowadays make the author convinced that access to a particular plagiarism-detecting service like Turnitin.com is an indispensible part of solution for this kind of academic dishonesty. Investment in the use of Turnitin.com seems worthy for an educational institution in this digital age. By using it, there appear to be three practical benefits: (1) substantial ability to keep good reputation for educational institutions; (2) opportunity given for the students to rewrite and correct their plagiarised texts before being caught; and (3) convenience and effectiveness in assessment and detection for educators, and so more time availability for their other important tasks. Second, as an educator, the author will need to do thorough assessment to the students’ works in order that the students will get grades in accordance with their own efforts. This is also important because some OWAL papers and certain improper citations are likely to go undetected. Third, close cooperation with other faculty is also an essential solution for online plagiarism because other faculty members who have specialized knowledge in plagiarism-related issues can be invited to give students plagiarism education. Further, the other faculty can also be asked for help with remediating those students who have poor writing and referencing skills so that the students will not do unintentional plagiarism later. Regarding plagiarism education, Howard & Davies’ (2009) proposition of a three-step solution, i.e., (1) to start with instilling in students a lasting sense of valuing others’ property, (2) to give hands-on guidelines to students during their online research, and (3) to teach students how to summarize and paraphrase, is quite appealing and practical to the present writer.

Conclusion

            To combat online plagiarism effectively, the process of educating seems to be the most appropriate way of tackling for the lasting betterment of students’ academic integrity and for keeping the good reputation of educational institutions, while taking other necessary measures wisely at the same time.

References

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