Tag Archive for 'iThenticate'

Dissertation Plagiarism

Published on 2010/08/18 in Plagiarism, Plagiarism News and iThenticate. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The University of Virginia recently stripped Fred D. Smith of his doctorate in education.  Last year, iThenticate was utilized by a reporter from the Journal News to break a story on Smith, the ex-Pocantico Hills superintendent who plagiarized much of his UVA dissertation.

Smith’s plagiarism saga began in November 2009, when he suddenly resigned as the Pocantico Hills superintendent after it was discovered that he had copied newsletters from a Massachusetts elementary school principal. The Journal News then partnered with iThenticate to discover that large portions of Smith’s dissertation from the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education were also plagiarized.  From the Journal News: “…iThenticate, found numerous passages that matched academic publications predating his. The most notable similarities were with a paper by Jerri Ann Whitehurst Hall, now a high school principal in Rutland, Georgia.”

A dissertation is meant to display the culmination of an individual’s knowledge in a specific area of study. A dissertation positions a person as a candidate for a degree – in Smith’s case a PhD in Education from UVA.  If a person plagiarizes much of their dissertation it not only devalues the degree, but also the credibility of the whole university.

A university is essentially a business that sells education.  The end goal of ‘buying’ an education is to achieve a degree, which certifies a person in a specific area of expertise.  Even if a few plagiarized dissertations are credited unknowingly, they still devalue the degree, which hurts the entire institution.

Moving forward into the professional world – qualifying credentials from a university also play a large part in a person’s future.  A dissertation travels with an individual throughout their professional career, making a difference in where they are hired and what they can have published.  In other words, a dissertation is often the gateway to an entire career.  If that dissertation is a fraud, it can have a chain effect on a number of collaborating individuals and institutions.

Citations:

O’Donnell, Noreen. “Ex-Pocantico superintendent accused of plagiarism gets doctorate revoked” The Journal. LoHud.com 3 August 2010. http://www.lohud.com/article/20100803/NEWS02/8030331/Ex-Pocantico-superintendent-accused-of-plagiarism-gets-doctorate-revoked

Perspectives on Plagiarism

Published on 2010/08/04 in Plagiarism, Plagiarism Case Studies, Plagiarism Discussion, Plagiarism News, plagiarism prevention and student plagiarism. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

The New York Times recently published a piece that discussed today’s younger generation and their views on plagiarism.  The article analyzes several perspectives on plagiarism, coming from college students to teachers to parents.  One primary perspective that could explain a recent increase in cases of plagiarism is that the younger generation simply doesn’t know what plagiarism is, and overall has a more laissez faire attitude towards copying content without proper citations.

From the New York Times: “But these cases — typical ones, according to writing tutors and officials responsible for discipline at the three schools who described the plagiarism — suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed. It is a disconnect that is growing in the Internet age as concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information, say educators who study plagiarism. ”

The article also discusses a second possibility: kids know what plagiarism is, but are lazy and don’t have the writing skills to keep up with a vigorous load of college courses.  To keep up the pace they make a conscious decision to plagiarize even though they know it’s wrong.  For this viewpoint, the writer interviews Sarah Wilensky, a Senior at Indiana University who has written on the topic of plagiarism: “If you’re taught how to closely read sources and synthesize them into your own original argument in middle and high school, you’re not going to be tempted to plagiarize in college, and you certainly won’t do so unknowingly,” she said.

There is a third scenario that the article doesn’t discuss:  the possibility that even though people know they are doing wrong, they simply don’t think they will be caught.  For some, plagiarism may be a gamble, but a risk worth taking due to the notion that they have good chance of getting away with it.  For these students, it could be akin to breaking the speed limit in a car:  if they don’t see any traffic cops around they may take the risk.

That’s why one possible solution to the plagiarism problem is to let the new generation know that technologies are in place to ensure students (and authors) are employing best practices in writing.  Modern plagiarism detection software like Turnitin and iThenticate are leading the way in detecting instances of plagiarism by scanning both massive databases of archived content along with more recent internet sources.  Many iThenticate users have seen a similar scenario:  letting people know that their submitted content is going to be scanned by a sophisticated plagiarism detection solution in many cases serves to further curb instances of plagiarism. In a sense, plagiarism detection software can act like a cop on the side of road – the simple presence of the squad car makes drivers slow down.

Citations:

Gabriel, Trip. “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age” The New York Times 1 August 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html?_r=2&hp

Science Publishers Focus on Plagiarism

Published on 2010/07/07 in CrossCheck, Plagiarism, Plagiarism Case Studies, Plagiarism Discussion, Plagiarism News, Science Publishers, iThenticate, plagiarism prevention and scientific research. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Plagiarism detection software took center stage as Nature recently published a revealing article that details how science publishers are equipping themselves to fight a growing trend in plagiarism within the research community.  The Nature article follows several publishers, including Nature Publishing Group itself, and their journey over the past two years utilizing CrossCheck, a plagiarism detection service that has revealed some eye opening figures.

CrossCheck employs iThenticate’s technology as the backbone of its service, allowing it to reference databases of deeply archived content along with more recent ’shallow’ content.  CrossRef, a non-profit consortium of thousands of research groups and publishers, operates the CrossCheck service.  As more publishers submit their material to an already massive database of content within CrossCheck (over 25.5 million articles), the service becomes consistently more efficient at catching plagiarism.

Some of the plagiarism figures from publishers testing the CrossCheck and iThenticate service are ground-breaking.  From Nature:  Taylor & Francis has been testing CrossCheck for 6 months on submissions to three of its science journals. In one, 21 of 216 submissions, or almost 10%, had to be rejected because they contained plagiarism; in the second journal, that rate was 6%; and in the third, 13 of 56 of articles (23%) were rejected after testing, according to Rachael Lammey, a publishing manager at Taylor & Francis’s offices in Abingdon, UK.

The data from the journals still has its variables, including the question of whether more people are plagiarizing or whether the technology is simply allowing publishers to discover instances at a higher rate. Either way, CrossCheck and iThenticate have already proven to be a valuable asset for science journals. The real difference between iThenticate and any other plagiarism detection service is its ability to access incredibly massive databases of content.  So far journals have made use of the technology on several levels, including discovering smaller instances of paraphrasing to entirely plagiarized works that match articles from long ago.

Over the next several years as more journals adopt similar technologies within their editorial processes, we’ll likely have even more accurate numbers on the levels of plagiarism out there.   Journals that have already adopted the plagiarism detection software are likely to see a drop in cases of plagiarized work over the next several years;  any potential plagiarizer that knows they probably will be caught is far less likely to commit the act in the first place.

Citations:

Butler, Declan “‘Journals step up plagiarism policing.” Nature Publishing Group. 5 July 2010. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100705/full/466167a.html

Plagiarism in the Cyber World

Published on 2010/06/30 in Plagiarism Case Studies, Plagiarism Discussion, Plagiarism News, book publisher, iThenticate and plagiarism prevention. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

A new book said to be written by former hacker turned security consultant, Gregory D. Evans, has been recently marred by plagiarism accusations.    ‘World No. 1 Hacker,’ which was published by Cyber Crime Media Publishing House, is said to have several large portions duplicated from Armando Romeo’s content, which was previously published on hackercenter.com.

From The New New Internet: “However, vast portions of the book, published by Cyber Crime Media publishing house, appear to have been plagiarized. The majority of chapter 12 is, in fact, identical to a previously published tutorial by Armando Romeo published on hackerscenter.com in 2008. Portions of chapter 9 were also taken from another manual published on ethicalhacker.net.”

The instance of plagiarism was verified using iThenticate’s plagiarism detection software, which enabled the user to clearly see incidents of duplicate material between ‘World No. 1 Hacker’ and Romeo’s published content.  iThenticate is made to provide both powerful plagiarism detection features along with ease of use.  One of these features allowed all submitted content to be cross-checked against  new content that appears on the web – which is how this particular instance of plagiarism was discovered.  In addition, iThenticate allows submitted content to be referenced against deep repositories of older content from offline sources like research journals.

Cyber Security is clearly an important  frontier on the web – the well-being of large organizations depends on their ability to protect their proprietary information.   Although often overlooked, Content Security is also extremely important.  An author’s content – whether it is a blog post or a formal publishing – is their proprietary information.  Protecting an author’s content and preventing people from illicitly duplicating it is one of  iThenticate’s goals.

It is also iThenticate’s goal to help small and large publishing houses to protect their reputations by preventing any plagiarized content from getting out.  Although most authors are trustworthy, Cyber Crime Media should have made it a policy to run a content check on any materials before publishing them.  Using iThenticate before a problem existed would have saved the publisher money and time dealing with legal problems and bad press recovery.

Citations:

Cheek, Michael  “‘World No. 1 Hacker’ Marred by Plagiarism Allegations” The New New Internet,  Executive Mosaic LLC. 24 June 2010. http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/2010/06/24/world-no-1-hacker-marred-by-plagiarism-allegations/

Preventing Plagiarism in Politics

Published on 2010/05/27 in Plagiarism Discussion, Plagiarism News, Political Speech, Politics, iThenticate and political plagiarism. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Last week we discussed Maine Gubernatorial candidate Les Otten’s problem with plagiarism, which certainly did his campaign no good. This week another case of political plagiarism has moved to the forefront.  Vaughn Ward, a republican candidate for Idaho’s first congressional district, was found to have also plagiarized another politician’s speech.  The plagiarized material was not just from any other politician and it wasn’t any run-of-the-mill speech.  It was President Obama’s 2004 Democratic Convention Speech that is widely considered to have catapulted him towards the presidency.

The typical response came out of the Idaho candidate’s camp: denying any intention of purposefully copying the speech.    Once again, whether this plagiarism was a mistake or not, it doesn’t matter.  The damage was done – Ward ended up losing to his opponent after the plagiarism scandal emerged.  As in any other business, politics is not forgiving to those who slip up.  The politicians who are able to maintain a clean image are those who can prevent mistakes before they happen.

If Mr. Ward’s campaign really wanted to prevent mistakes like this from happening they would adopt a political editorial process that included the use of iThenticate’s plagiarism detection software. They would simply log on, upload the speech or statement to iThenticate and have the software do the hard work.

Just to show how the iThenticate process works, we tested the paragraph in question from Ward’s speech by uploading it.  iThenticate was immediately able to pull various content matches dated back to Obama’s speech in 2004.  One match is titled:  “BARACK OBAMA DELIVERS REMARKS AT DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION.”, Political/Congressional Transcript Wire, July 27 2004 Issue.

The match also denotes that the content in question has a 97% similarity to the publication source.  Unlike simply ‘Googling’ a line of text to check for matches, iThenticate runs content through a variety of offline publications, journals and archives – providing relevant information that goes beyond shallow internet content.

A political campaign is a team effort, with published statements coming from a variety of sources like candidates, campaign managers, interns, etc.  iThenticate provides a plagiarism filter for any of those sources.  Whether there is a bad apple on the team or someone makes an honest mistake, iThenticate provides an unbiased report for the good of the campaign.

Citations:

Adams, Richard  “Vaughn Ward: The Dumb and Paste Republican Candidate” The Guardian 25 May 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/may/25/vaughn-ward-idaho-sarah-palin