Plagiarism Resource Site

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 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.

Recent admissions of inadvertent plagiarism by two prominent Harvard law professors, Charles Ogletree and Laurence Tribe, have drawn attention to a largely undiscussed aspect of plagiarism -- "the phenomenon of managed books . . . in which some academics rely on assistants to help produce books, in some cases allowing the assistants to write first drafts." See "Harvard in a Quandary" for further details.

Simon Caterson provides a thoughtful survey of the ubiquity of plagiarism in academic, literary, and popular cultures. He notes: We are living in what the American writer Hillel Schwartz has dubbed 'the culture of the copy', where virtually nothing in everyday life in the West is absolutely unique. As Schwartz dryly observes: 'Of plagiarism, little new can be written.'

"To turn back a rising trend of plagiarism incidents, UC Berkeley faculty may step up efforts to identify and punish cheating by creating a new grading category on transcripts or purchasing new campuswide anti-plagiarism software." See Daily Californian Online.

Indiana University Pennsylvania provides students with Writenote and Endnote to help avoid plagiarism. And offer the Turnitin service to faculty to help detect plagiarism.

Joel Wingard, Professor of English, at Moravian College, has made available, "Anti-Plagiarism Guide for Writing Teachers" (PDF format): "a seven-part guide" that "encourages fellow writing instructors at the downtown Bethlehem school to employ teaching practices that prevent plagiarism."

Charles Lipson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, has authored a guide to help students avoid plagiarism. The guide, Work in College: How to Prepare Citations, Avoid Plagiarism, and Achieve Real Academic Success, will be published by the U of Chicago Press in October.

The Vice Chancellor at the University of Newcastle told the ICAC anti-corruption tribunal that his level of responsibility for involvement in investigating senior staff overturning a lecturer's "zero" marks for 15 alledged plagiarists, does not extend to managing the outcome of the investigation. That is, whether the mark is actually overturned. Contrarily, he feels he only manages the unit itself and its staff. Presumely, not the actual governance of educational matters.