Plagiarism and Copyright Issues
The ICT4LT site has a section on Plagiarism in one of its modules (Module 4.1, Section 7):
http://www.ict4lt.org. A relevant extract follows. We have also set up a page of guidelines regarding Copyright at the ICT4LT site:
http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htmHaving been an external examiner for a number of different universities over the past 10 years, I am acutely aware of the growing problem of plagiarism among students – and among staff members too! As a partner in a publishing business and as a webmaster responsible for two websites, I am also acutely aware of the need to be on one’s guard against breaches of copyright. Just because something is publicly visible on the Web it does not imply that it is copyright-free. The standard legislation regarding copyright and conventions of bibliographical referencing apply to materials gleaned from the Web in just the same way as they do to materials gleaned from books and other sources.
Here is the relevant extract from ICT4LT Module 4.1, Section 7:
QUOTE
Detecting plagiarism
Software packages that detect plagiarism already exist:
One example is Cerberus, developed by Jozef Colpaert, University of Antwerp, and Wilfried Decoo, who is currently teaching at Brigham Young University, USA.
Cerberus can be downloaded from:
http://www.didascalia.be/cerberus.htmScroll down to the bottom of the page.
Another example is EVE2: see
http://www.canexus.com/eve, which tracks down Internet sources of plagiarism and supports MS Word and Corel Word Perfect files. A trial version can be downloaded.
There are particular problems with detection of plagiarism by university students, and even by academic staff, which create the need for this type of software. This is considered sufficiently alarming for the university funding councils in the UK to have set up a project looking at the whole issue. The project website is worth a visit for anyone wishing to find out more about this issue: see the JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service at
http://www.jiscpas.ac.uk