Record number of plagiarism cases last year

Magally Zelaya, staff

There were 95 reported cases of plagiarism at the U of M in 2006-07, according to the annual report of the university discipline committee released earlier this month.

The numbers are up from 76 in 2005-06 and up from a low of 47 in 2002-03.

“To plagiarize is to take ideas or words of another person and pass them off as one’s own,” according to the university’s general academic regulations and requirements. It applies to “any written work, in traditional or electronic format, as well as orally or verbally presented work” including “diagrams, statistical tables and the like, as well as to written material, and materials or information from Internet sources.”

The increase in plagiarism cases could be attributed to the more widespread use of the Internet. Vanessa Warne, assistant professor in the Faculty of English, said the majority of the plagiarism she’s encountered in the last seven years has been Internet-based.

“It’s easier to plagiarize, but it’s easier to find,” she added.

Brandy Usick, director of the student advocacy office, which helps students dealing with academic or discipline issues by providing information on student rights and responsibilities, voiced a similar opinion.

“From my perspective, it might be that instructors might be identifying it or reporting it more,” she said.

Unlike other Canadian universities such as Ryerson, the University, University of Toronto, and the University of Victoria, the U of M does not use online plagiarism detection systems.

Turnitin.com is one company that provides such a system. It compares students’ assignments, which must be submitted to the instructor electronically, against a database of a variety of sources including over 50 million student papers.

The American company receives over 125,000 student papers every day and has 8,400 “institutional clients” (universities and high schools), according to John Barrie, one of the company’s founders.

“That number is continuing to grow. The usage of Turnitin is doubling every year,” said Barrie. “I think that we are scheduled to have over 10,000 clients by the end of next year.”

McGill adopted Turnitin.com in 2003 and controversy arose over issues of presumed guilt and intellectual property rights. A number of students protested the forced submission of their work to a third party, and McGill amended its policies so that students can now opt-out provided they submit other ways of verifying originality, such as submitting multiple drafts and photocopied sources.

The U of M’s Senate voted not to endorse the use of plagiarism detection systems in April 2005. Instead, the Senate voted to undertake “instructional, preventative and restorative options . . . to reduce the number of instances of plagiarism and to foster a greater understanding of academic integrity.”

Warne has focused on preventative measures and has seen a drop in plagiarized work. She said that restructuring assignments to make plagiarism difficult has paid off.

“It’s taken me a lot more work at the beginning, but, by making it difficult to plagiarize, I have a lot less work in terms of the academic dishonesty clean up and the researching that goes into discovering plagiarism,” she said.

Because the university does not have detection systems, instructors and markers are therefore responsible for verifying that suspected work is indeed plagiarized and for spotting the indicators of plagiarism.

Usick said there are red flags that mark plagiarism.

“It’s the style, it’s the voice, the language, the types of words that are used or maybe it doesn’t quite fit — suddenly you’ve got this beautifully written sentence that doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the sentences around it,” she said.

“[Instructors] might know right away where it’s from. It might be a text — like the text that’s used in the class — or it might be an assigned reading, or they’re just familiar [with the material] because it’s their area of specialty. They know the sources, so they can easily track it down.”

Or, the instructors simply type a suspicious sentence or string of words into a Google.com search and pull up the source, she said.

Once plagiarism is confirmed, instructors report the offence to the department head, who writes a letter to the student informing them of the allegations, and a meeting is scheduled to speak to the allegations.

Discipline is typically administered at the departmental level and is concurrent with the university’s student discipline bylaw.

Penalties can range from failing the assignment, redoing the assignment, failing the course, compulsory withdrawal, and permanent notation on transcripts. In the case of more senior students and second offences, disciplinary action can result in suspension from the department and, rarely, expulsion.

Students who object to the disciplinary measures can appeal the ruling. but in most cases, not the charge. Usick said that plagiarism charges are not usually dropped, as there is typically strong evidence.

Usick noted that the most common reasons for plagiarism are not malicious.

“It might be a student who just ran out of time or just didn’t feel confident in their own ability to write their paper,” she said.

Students plagiarize at all levels of university study.

“We haven’t broken our stats down,” said Usik. “But my take is that we probably see more cases at the first-year level, but certainly it does happen in all years and it happens in graduate studies as well.”

Arlene Young, an assistant professor and associate department head in the Faculty of English, believes the university would benefit from adopting a plagiarism detection system. However, she suggested students seek professors’ help and accept late penalties before thinking about plagiarizing.

“Never plagiarize, no matter how desperate you are,” she added.

Warne suggested submitting a works consulted list in addition to a works cited list, in order to promote accountability to sources and as a defense against accusations.

She went on to say, “It’s not OK to steal somebody’s bike, why would it be OK to steal something much more valuable to them — their ideas?”