Plagiarism Resource Site

University of Nebraska, Lincoln, has instituted several measures to counter plagiarism among students: including courses on library research and on accidental plagiarism. They will also soon pilot SafeAssignment, the plagiarism detection tool now available through BlackBoard.

The CS Monitor considers the recent spat of high profile plagiarism cases among faculty: In recent years, students have been heavily prepped on the perils of plagiarism. But it turns out their teachers, in some cases, have been more lax.

Richard Posner, a leading American federal judge and legal thinker, recently blogged some considerations on plagiarism. Recent "scandals" involving charges of plagiarism by professors and other writers treat plagiarism as (1) a well-defined concept that (2) is unequivocally deserving of condemnation. It is neither.

Results of a recent survey of academic dishonesty at Syracuse University are "on par with national averages:" Seventy-four percent of undergraduates say they have committed at least one of the 20 forms of cheating listed on the survey, ranging from falsifying a bibliography to cheating over the shoulder of a classmate during a test. . . . One in three faculty members surveyed said they have ignored an instance of suspected cheating in their classes.

The Daily Mississippian reports that "according to an open letter submitted by the Academic Discipline Committee to Provost Carolyn Staton, cases of plagiarism have increased in recent semesters."

Reported cases of plagiarism have practically doubled at the University of Washington. "'In 2002 there were 35 reported cases; last year there were 66,' said Amanda Myhre, the administrative assistant to the vice president for student affairs." The article, reported in the UW Daily, goes on to confuse plagiarism with other forms of academic dishonesty: "More than 75 percent of college students admit to having cheated at least once on tests or having copied papers, according to the Center for Academic Integrity's Web site." Increasingly, reports on plagiarism confuse it with other forms of academic dishonesty.

The Chronicle offers an article on four plagiarizing professors, who aren't well-known or notorious. The point is to suggest that research plagiarism is widespread. "It's like cockroaches," says Peter Charles Hoffer, a University of Georgia historian and author of a recent book about academic fraud. "For every one you see on the kitchen floor, there are a hundred behind the stove."

A recent editorial in the Boise State newspaper suggests that careful and conscientious citation of sources is the best way to avoid plagiarism.

The Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools voted to drop Edward Waters from membership two months after the college "acknowledged that it had plagiarized material from another college in a document crucial for its reaccreditation bid."

Commenting on plagiarism at Michigan State, University ombudsman Stan Soffin claims that "in the past few years he hasn't seen an increase in plagiarism, but an increase in professors choosing to punish students. 'Faculty members, I believe, are more inclined to pursue students who have cheated than they were several years ago.'"