[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
That is the weakness of these services; that they cannot tap into pass-protected data bases, such as PsycArticles. On the other hand, my understanding is that, for at least Turnitin, all of those student papers that you had submitted now become part of the services ever-expanding database. Therefore, any student who submits material from those sources that had been earlier included in the student papers should now be flagged down.
One of the ironies of this technique is the following. Say I plagiarise a paper from a journal and submit it in a course without detection. Now it is part of the database. You come along and use phrases from that article in your paper. You will be flagged as plagiarising from my paper. One weakness of the system is that whichever paper makes it into the database first is given credit as author.
For example, I submitted one of my published Mozart effect papers. The detection software missed that completely but did indicate that certain phrases were copied from a paper in their database. I looked at that (student-written) paper and it was clear that the author had copied phrases from some web site, which in turn had copied the information from an earlier AP story. This student paper is now the "author" and the AP reporter and I are the plagiarisers.
A related problem is figuring out the real author. So much on the web is literally plagiarised from other sites. Health information (e.g., the definition of obese or the prevalence of obesity) is a good example of this issue. Some of the student papers cited health statistics and these instances were routinely highlighted. Students noted that they had never visited the site indicated and, when I examined to the site, it was clear that the site had copied the information from some other site. "Googling" the highlighted phrases would turn up dozens of sites with the exact same wording.
Ken --------------------------------------------------------------- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --------------------------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
