Plagiarism FAQ's
Plagiarism Home
1. What constitutes plagiarism?
2. What should I tell my students about plagiarism?
3. What resources are available for instructors?
4. How should I try to prevent plagiarism?
5. Why do students plagiarize?
6. Are all instances of plagiarism equally grievous?
7. Aren’t students going to plagiarize no matter what I do?
8. How can I determine if a student wrote the paper herself?
9. Where can I locate the sources of plagiarized papers?
10. How can I utilize Turnitin.com in determining the authenticity of a paper?
11. I suspect that my student plagiarized her term paper. What should I do?
12. I found out that my student plagiarized his paper. What am I required to do?
13. Do all the colleges of the University of Iowa follow the same policies?
1. What constitutes plagiarism?
According to the University of Iowa Academic Policies and Other Useful Information for Students 2004-05, all forms of plagiarism are considered academic fraud. This includes the following actions:
- presentation of ideas from sources that you do not credit;
- use of direct quotations without quotation marks and without credit to the source;
- paraphrasing information and ideas from sources without credit to the source;
- failure to provide adequate citations for material obtained through electronic research;
- downloading and submitting work from electronic databases without citation;
- participation in a group project which presents plagiarized materials;
- taking credit as part of a group without participating as required in the work of the group;
- submitting material created/written by someone else as one’s own, including purchased term/research papers.
This information is also available in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Student Handbook (Section IX: Student Rights and Responsibilities - Academic Fraud, Dishonesty, and Cheating), available at http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/students/academic_handbook/ix.shtml#1
2. What should I tell my students about plagiarism?
First and foremost, you should not merely assume that your students know what constitutes plagiarism. You should explain what actions constitute plagiarism. (See Question 1) The next thing to do is to explain what consequences there are for getting caught of plagiarizing. Try to be as specific as you can. If you plan to fail any student who plagiarizes for the course, then they should be made aware of this at the beginning of the semester.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has a requirement that a summary of the collegiate policy on plagiarism needs to be stated in the class syllabus. (See CLAS: Classroom Procedure – The Required Syllabus for details, available at http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/faculty/teaching/classroom_p&p/syllabus_etc.shtml)
You may want to expand this definition by stating what constitutes plagiarism and what consequences there are for getting caught of plagiarizing. Giving clear directions on what is plagiarism will help students to avoid inadvertently plagiarizing the work of others.
3. What resources are available for instructors?
There is a host of resources available, both from external sources and from different departments at the University of Iowa. Links to these resources are collected here: www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/plagiarism
4. How should I try to prevent plagiarism?
There are two broad ways to approach this topic. First, you can try to make plagiarism less tempting, by explaining what the punishments for getting caught include. Instead of just using the penalties as deterrent, you may want to help the students see the value of the assignments. Second, you can try to make plagiarism less easy. This can be accomplished by requiring thesis statements, annotated bibliographies, or class presentations on the term paper topic; alternatively, you could have the students complete a series of shorter assignments that build up to the final paper. This approach has the benefit of shifting the focus from the final product (the term paper) to the process (of researching/writing). These two ways complement each other, so you should not rely exclusively on just one of them.
5. Why do students plagiarize?
As there are many types of students, so there are many reasons why students choose to plagiarize. Here is a partial list of reasons why students may plagiarize (Taken in part from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Student Academic Handbook):
- Copying the work done by someone else is seen as the easiest route for completing the assignment.
- The student lacks interest in the topic. If the assigned topic fails to interest the students, it receives a low priority and, hence, it becomes more tempting to copy the work off of a source.
- Poor time-management skills. The student may not understand the demands of the research process, thereby putting off starting the project.
- Fear of a bad grade. If the student lacks confidence in her own skills, copying the assignment may be seen as a way to boost the grade.
- Thrill of rule-breaking. Thus, the more sternly plagiarism is condemned, the more eager the student becomes to engage in it.
- Lack of knowledge. The student may (mistakenly) think that all material on Internet belongs to public domain. Also, the student may not be aware of the proper citation methods.
- Cultural differences. Students that come fresh out of high school may have been taught to use on-line resources, dictionaries, etc. more indiscriminately. Also, international students may have different expectations as to what is acceptable behavior.
6. Are all instances of plagiarism equally grievous?
Not necessarily so. Although the plagiarism policies at UI do not draw a distinction between intentionally copying the assignment from an unauthorized source and unintentionally failing to cite the source, this does not mean that all instances should be treated equally. For instance, if a student has copied the bulk of the paper from an on-line paper mill, this is more grievous than if she has failed to cite the source in a proper way. Other factors to consider include the extent to which the paper is plagiarized: is it limited to just one sentence, or is the bulk of the paper taken from sources that are not cited? As the policies do not distinguish between different types of plagiarism, the judgments one needs to make are subjective.
7. Aren’t students going to plagiarize no matter what I do?
This largely depends on what motivates the students to plagiarize in the first place. If the plagiarism is committed out of ignorance, or out of time-crunch, these can be effectively countered by educating students on how to cite source material, or by shifting the emphasis from the final product (the term paper) to the process (of researching and writing). On the other hand, if a student plagiarizes out of the thrill of breaking the rules, it is doubtful that preventative strategies will have an effect.
8. How can I determine if a student wrote the paper herself?
The links below offer suggestions for signs that the paper may be plagiarized. The presence of these signs should not be construed as conclusive evidence that the paper is plagiarized. Rather, if these signs occur, they should warrant a further investigation. Notice that not all of the suggestions below are applicable as is to all disciplines.
http://www.coastal.edu/library/presentations/plagiarz.html
http://www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm
Also, see the case study on plagiarism (link below) on how to use Internet search engines for determining the authenticity of a paper.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/plagiarism/casestudy.pdf
9. Where can I locate the sources of plagiarized papers?
Although the on-line paper mills seem to have resulted in proliferation of downloadable term papers, this is not the only source for students to get papers. Others may include books, fraternity test files, and other students. The latter may be more difficult to trace, but doing an Internet search on suspicious passages may reveal the source. (See Question 8 above)
In a recent study that gauged the students’ self-perceptions, about 10 per cent admitted having copied material from the internet for their paper without citing the source, and about 15 per cent admitted having copied material from books or other printed sources without citing the source. This would indicate that on-line plagiarism is not as prevalent as ‘old-fashioned’ plagiarism.
10. How can I utilize Turnitin.com in determining the authenticity of a paper?
To learn more about Turnitin.com, contact Ken Clinkenbeard at ITS/Academic Technologies.
To sign up to use Turnitin.com for your class, e-mail your request to turnitin@uiowa.edu
There are two principal ways of using Turnitin.com. First, you can require all your students to submit their assignments electronically. The originality reports for the submissions can be sent back to the student or directly to you.
Alternatively, if you have received a paper from a student and you suspect its authenticity, you can upload individual papers (either by cutting and pasting the text, or as a file) to Turnitin.com using the “Quick Submit” feature.
11. I suspect that my student plagiarized her term paper. What should I do?
Before you can take any actions (punitive or other) against the student, this suspicion needs to be confirmed. There are a few ways for doing this. First, if you require your class to submit their papers to Turnitin.com, a high percentile match may indicate that the paper has been copied from online sources. (A word of caution, however: the service does not differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate citations, so this is not conclusive proof.) Alternatively, you may want to do an on-line search on the student’s paper. Enter some unique phrases into a search engine, and see if this returns a match for the source. If so, you should make copies of the material. The next step for you (or, if you are a TA, your supervisor) is to talk with the student. Ask the student to explain some parts of the paper to see if she really knows the material. If you have found material which is cited without attribution, you need to decide whether this warrants further steps. (For instance, if the student failed to use proper citations, you may want to have the student rewrite the paper and correct these errors. If, on the other hand, the student attempts to pass as her own a paper that was downloaded from the internet, you may want to take punitive measures against the student.)
The links below offer suggestions for signs that the paper may be plagiarized. The presence of these signs should not be construed as conclusive evidence that the paper is plagiarized. Rather, if these signs occur, they should warrant a further investigation.
http://www.coastal.edu/library/presentations/plagiarz.html\
http://www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm
Also, see the case study on plagiarism (link below) on how to use Internet search engines for determining the authenticity of a paper.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/plagiarism/casestudy.pdf
12. I found out that my student plagiarized his paper. What am I required to do?
Different colleges of the University of Iowa have different procedures that need to be followed (see Question 13 below). The following procedure applies to CLAS undergraduate students.
Once you have verified that the student did not write the paper herself, you need to report this to your DEO. If you are a TA, you should first contact your supervisor. Once you have decided on the penalties you will impose on the student, you need to send your report (together with copies of the student’s paper and the source material(s) you have discovered) to the Associate Dean of Academic Services and Programs.
For other colleges, the report needs to be sent to the Dean of the college.
For further information, consult the CLAS undergraduate student guidelines for dealing with plagiarism : http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/faculty/teaching/classroom_p&p/plagiarism.shtml
13. Do all the colleges of the University of Iowa follow the same policies?
The procedures outlined above (Question 1 and Question 12) pertain to undergraduate students at the college of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
The general procedures – ones that apply to all students at the University of Iowa – can be found in the Policies and Regulations Affecting Students, section on Academic Misconduct:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~vpss/policies/ii/c.shtml#main
To find out about procedures for students in different colleges, please consult the following links:
College of Business
Honor Code:
http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/upo/advising/honorcode.html
College of Education
Policy on Student Academic Misconduct:
http://www.education.uiowa.edu/coedean/policies/student_ac_misconduct/index.html
College of Engineering
Regulations Dealing with Academic Misconduct:
http://www.engineering.uiowa.edu/current-students/academic-misconduct.html
College of Law
Academic Rules and Practices - Policy on Misconduct:
http://www.law.uiowa.edu/fachand/misconduct.php
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Classroom Procedures - Academic Fraud, Plagiarism, and Cheating:
http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/faculty/teaching/classroom_p&p/acad_fraud_etc.shtml
CLAS Student Academic Handbook – Student Rights and Responsibilities:
http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/students/academic_handbook/ix.shtml
College of Medicine
Medical Student Handbook - Full version:
http://www.medicine.uiowa.edu/osac/administration/handbook/2004-2005final.pdf
Medical Student Handbook: Honor Code:
http://www.medicine.uiowa.edu/osac/administration/handbook/2004-05honorcode.pdf
College of Pharmacy
Student Handbook 2004-2005
http://pharmacy.uiowa.edu/currentstu/handbook%205.pdf
College of Public Health
Doctoral Student Handbook:
http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/hmp/pdf/phd_handbook_03.pdf
Masters Students Handbook:
http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/hmp/pdf/mha_handbook_03.pdf
Graduate College
Questions of academic misconduct arising in the Graduate College or in the professional colleges are treated on an individual basis. In the Graduate College, the incidences of plagiarism are handled at the departmental level.
Inquiries for further information for students in professional graduate colleges should be directed at the office of their respective dean.
Information for this section was researched and compiled by Tuomas Manninen.