Technological Age, the Vast Expanse

¶ … technological age, the vast expanse of the internet offers much more temptation to use source material incorrectly. With more obscure and publicly owned material hits computer screens all around the world, many students have resorted to the biggest academic blasphemy. Many authors and researchers are being robbed of original intellectual material for the sake of a dishonest grade. Despite the explosion of free, and therefore very tempting material, there are options to help curb the growing threat. Registering papers through websites like www.TurnItIn.com will help ensure that worked turned in is original. Precautions can also be enacted through more thorough teaching of how to best cite source material and how that material can be properly integrated into student material without threatening the integrity of that said material.

As more and more people upload their work onto the World Wide Web, that work is compromised by students looking for a free grade. Many students abuse free internet sources by copying material or citing source material improperly. Using source material without properly citing sources can include deliberate plagiarism through copying, or through inadvertent mistake through a lack of knowledge on how to properly source outside material. Also, websites like Wikipedia are providing sometimes unreliable material to those willing to compromise their own academic work by plagiarizing another source material. Other sources, which were previously unknown and unattainable to many students before, became available to a large portion of the world. Small internet-based magazines and journals now provide prime un-copyrighted material to eager students willing to risk plagiarism.

This leads to another point which is worth addressing while discussing plagiarism. Much of the material which is plagiarized is actually owned by someone. That particular person is either the author or the publisher of the work in question. People put original works on the internet for a variety of reasons. For whatever reason they do so, it is still a product of their "intellectual property" and should not be used in anyway to benefit another person who is claiming that work to be his or hers. By using others original work, one takes away from the original quality of that work. It is a depressing but very real fact that many authors and publishers have to deal with people plagiarizing their original work. If these original authors keep having their work stolen from them, they might possibly stop contributing their "intellectual property" altogether. If this were to happen, legitimate students who use material honestly and properly cite all sources will be losing out on untold amounts of useful information.

There are several ways which would prevent plagiarism from getting out of and any further. In recent years, many colleges and universities have begun using programs to detect plagiarism. Schools turn to services such as www.TurnItIn.com as a prime weapon in the fight against plagiarism. These services run received papers through an immense database which contains publications from around the world. The service looks for certain key words and sentences which it compares to other key words and sentences in other previously published works. Using this new technology, most work turned in by students is checked and verified in the database. If something is too close for coincidence, or is obviously not cited right, this information will turn up during a scan through the database. A way to try and prevent plagiarism is to go back into teaching styles and to try and incorporate more information regarding how to properly cite sources used in research material. By more thoroughly explaining the thin lines of referencing a work and plagiarizing that work, students will have a better idea of how to craft outside material in a way which will not compromise the integrity of their work. What also needs to be expressed more in school are the severe legal and academic consequences of what plagiarism can cause. If students had more information about the legal ramifications of plagiarism, far less would actually be taking the risk of attempting it. Then, possible plagiarizers gain the opportunity to actually learn from doing the work themselves.