This article is more than 1 year old

Copying students targeted by Web

We know where you nicked your stories...

Undergraduates who plagiarise the intellectual efforts of others and claim them as their own could soon be outed as the thick, thieving idiots that they really are, thanks to a new Web site. Plagiarism.org checks submitted material against millions of online pages, separating the real students from the pseudo-scholars with the click of a mouse. (plagiarism alert -- the last 21 words were lifted directly from an AP story) According to John Barrie, a doctoral candidate at the University of California at Berkeley, academic papers are checked against Web material using the top 20 search engines and compared to a database of other manuscripts, including papers from every university licensing the service. (plagiarism alert, sorry AP) "It's a very effective way of searching the more than 800 million documents out on the Internet," said Barrie. (plagiarism alert) One academic is reported to have said: "Plagiarism is our most prevalent form of academic dishonesty." One ex-student, who asked not to be named, said: "Plagiarism was the only thing I was ever good at, at school." Good grief. ® Related stories Software sniffs out cheats on the Web Email 'cheat' to sue university Email 'cheating' students face mass expulsion Computer science 'cheats' exposed at second Scottish university Oxford University SU president caught cheating by PC

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like