Plagiarism: What a postgrad needs to know Dr Richard Rowe Department of Psychology University of Sheffield

Plagiarism Stealing of ideas or work of another person (including experts and fellow or former students)

Overview Plagiarism and unfair means Detection Investigation & Punishment Prevention

Plagiarism and unfair means Plagiarism (either intentional or unintentional) Submitting bought or commissioned work Double submission (or self plagiarism) Collusion Fabrication

Detecting Plagiarism

Plagiarism Detection Service Aka TurnItIn / Submit.ac.uk JISC funded service Database includes All prior student submissions (1,000,000+) Web resources (12 billion pages+, inc archive) 80,000 subscription journals Essay banks Continually expanding

What does the PDS do? Text matches submitted work to database Secret algorithm Not thrown by odd change Identifies overlapping sentences/paragraphs Identifies source Calculates overall similarity index

Interpretation of the output Impossible to set firm thresholds for identifying problems Overlap may be innocent Properly cited/referenced material Baseline overlaps vary by assignment Statistics assignment Set essay Student chosen topic

PDS Options Allow students to see plagiarism report at submission? Set cut-off and ask to resubmit until reach Precludes possibility of punishment Problem over collusion detection Problem of setting cutoff Teaches students to beat system

Our approach Do not show students reports Check top third of similarity indexes Read PDS reports Looking for large amounts of text from one source Published source Overlap with another single student

PDS Integration System for collecting, administering and returning student work Stand-alone web Integrates with Blackboard etc Allows anonymous marking

Detecting data fabrication Implausible results raise suspicion Easy to fake mean differences Complex patterns harder Correlation matrix Serial position curve Identify if raw data absent Questionnaires Computer records

Investigation & Punishment

Overlap with public resources Relatively clear cut Common excuses Could not reword better Improper citation/referencing Too busy / Only way to suceed Punishment depends on Scale of offence, importance of assignment, honesty in investigation, repeat offence

Overlap with another student Rule out chance overlap Compare to other overlaps among group Consistent inaccuracies Document properties Collusion? Theft? One party may be innocent “I lent the script but did not realise it would be copied…” Ensure students aware document security is their responsibility

Potential punishment (undergrad) Re-mark script with plagiarised material ignored 0 for assignment 0 for module (allow capped re-take?) Suspension Expulsion

Postgraduate punishment options Delete plagiarised sections and remark Allow resubmission Fail

Decisions exercise

Prevention

Deterrent Information on plagiarism detection Submit trial work See plagiarism report Information on past convictions Very carefully managed Warnings on “suspicious” submissions???

Education Training in study skills Citation, referencing and quoting Writing in own words Resources on plagiarism Podcasts Videos Repeating the message

Plagiarism: What a postgrad needs to know Dr Richard Rowe Department of Psychology University of Sheffield