Ethics

HS students question legality of Turnitin

Students at McLean HS in Fairfax County, VA, question their school's use of Turnitin:

Members of the new Committee for Students' Rights said they do not cheat or condone cheating. But they object to Turnitin's automatically adding their essays to the massive database, calling it an infringement of intellectual property rights.

Wikis and academic honesty

An article in the UC San Diego Guardian considers students' increasing reliance on wikis to prepare for exams.

Turnitin & copyright

In an article in Texas Tech's student paper, a law student questions the legality of Turnitin's practice of acquring for free and storing entire student essays.

Irish unis unite to fight plagiarism

According to the Sunday Times

Academics from seven [Irish] universities will meet to review the current rules and to consider introducing a tougher standardised system to tackle the problem.

WSU to monitor plagiarism offenders

Weber State University plans to monitor plagiarism cases to identify repeat offenders.

Plagiarism plagues Chinese unis

According to the Taipei Times

Plagiarism is rampant at Chinese universities as academics are pushed to publish or perish, with their schools often covering up for them, state media said yesterday.

A recent survey of 160 doctorate holders found 60 percent had copied the work of others and the same percentage had paid in order to be published in academic journals, the China Daily reported.

Minority of British uni students plagiarize

In a poll of 1,022 undergraduates at 119 institutions by The Times Higher Education Supplement, one in six admitted they had copied from friends..

See BBC News for full story. See also News.co.uk.

Plagiarism @ Oxford

According to the university's senior proctor, "extensive copying of work would undermine the value of an Oxford degree. . . . Writing in Oxford Magazine, an in-house publication, Professor Grafen blamed schools for creating a culture of work 'cobbled together from the internet'."

This story has been widely and variously picked up by the press. See also The Telegraph, Times of India, Guardian.

Mt St Vincent University bans detection software

The University Senate at MSVU in Nova Scotia has agreed to ban "all plagiarism detection software as of May."

'Does plagiarism matter?'

Jonathan Wolff muses on plagiarism in The Guardian.

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