Instruction Commons Guides
Deterring & Detecting Plagiarism

Strategies for Deterring Plagiarism

Talk to your students about plagiarism

• Make sure students know what plagiarism is and what the penalties are for plagiarizing. The Student Information Handbook has a section on academic dishonesty that explains what plagiarism is and what the penalties are.  We have included a checklist for avoiding plagiarism that you might want to provide to your students.

• Talk about the ethical and legal issues of fair use and intellectual property. Many students think that if there is no copyright symbol on a resource, it is not copyrighted and therefore up for grabs.

• Let students know that you know about paper mill sites, and also that you know about websites designed to help you catch plagiarism. Margaret Fain and Peggy Bates, from Coastal Carolina University, have put together two wonderful lists of Internet paper mill sites, including generic sites and a subject specific listing.

• Show students how to correctly cite sources, print and electronic. We have included an exercise which you can use with your students to help them understand when and how to cite sources.  

• Students often plagiarize because they are under stress—whether because they don’t have enough time, they have other commitments that often get priority, or other reasons that have nothing to do with studies. Pay attention to signs of stress in your students. Let them know about campus services they can use for help with writing, help with research, tutoring, and even counseling centers.  

• Show them a bad paper from one of the paper mill sites. Analyze it in class pointing out its weaknesses and failures.

• Talk to your students about the benefits of citing sources. Show them and let them know that documenting their arguments makes them stronger and more authoritative.

• Introduce your students to the idea that research is a process of discovery and not a product of saying what someone else has said; stress the constructivist nature of research assignments.

• Make the penalties for plagiarizing clear. Let students know that they will be penalized. Research suggests that if students know they are likely to get caught and penalized, plagiarism decreases.

• Get to know your students and let them know why their work is important. Studies have shown that students are less inclined to cheat when they know and admire their instructors.

• State clearly in your syllabus what the expectations are for completing homework assignments.  For example, collaboration policies are used at MIT and at George Washington University.  You can also ask your students to sign a Plagiarism Certificate, such as this one from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky.

• Require students to sign a statement along with the submission of their papers that attests to their authorship of the paper. Robert A. Harris has some good examples of these types of statements in his book The Plagiarism Handbook: Strategies for Preventing, Detecting, and Dealing with Plagiarism (Los Angeles CA: Pyrczak, 2001).  

• Give your students the Plagiarism Attitude Scale from Robert A. Harris’ The Plagiarism Handbook: Strategies for Preventing, Detecting, and Dealing with Plagiarism (Los Angeles CA: Pyrczak, 2001).  

Structure assignments to deter plagiarism

• Require specific components in the paper. For example, require a minimum number from a variety of source types (websites, journal articles, books).

• Ask them to use a specific source that you have discussed in class.

• Pick unique topics or very current events. Be specific: provide a list of topics and have students choose from the list.

• Assign shorter papers. Short papers force students to be more concise and often rule out paper mills, which require papers of more than six pages.

• Require current references; most of the sources used in paper mills will be older.

• Ask students to include photocopies or printouts of the title pages of their sources, or ask for a printout of a database search.

• Ask for two copies of each paper and keep one on file.  Let your students know you do this.

Be creative with your assignments

• Creative assignments undermine online paper mills that rely on professors assigning the same assignments as their peers at other institutions.

• Look outside of your discipline for example assignments and adapt them.

• Use unique formats like newsletters or exhibits for your students to exercise their communication talents. 

• Emphasize a local focus.  It will be more difficult for a student to find a pre-written paper on the Loess Hills than on gun control. The Library' Special Collections department has unique collections that can spark student interest and also curtail plagiarism, since these resources are not available at every institution.

• Have students locate and analyze a paper on a topic or have students compare and contrast several websites on a topic.

• Change assignments regularly, so that students can't get papers from previous students.  Changes might include allowed topics or format of presentation (changing a paper to a speech).  

Emphasize writing as a process

• Set a series of dates throughout the semester for progressive steps of the research process: topic due date, preliminary bibliography, outline, rough draft, final annotated bibliography, final draft.

• Topic statement - Know what your students plan to write on in advance. Establish a time after which students can't change their topic, to encourage an early start on the writing process. Be wary of last minute topic changes.  Maybe solicit possible term paper topics from students after the second week of class, then return them to the students with possible suggestions for sources, and narrowing or broadening the subject.

• Drafting and pre-writing - Pre-writing can be anything from preliminary brainstorming to an outline. Have students submit one or more drafts of their paper for you to review. This helps students to start writing earlier and also makes them more familiar with your expectations.

• Have some in-class writing times.

• Research journal - Have students keep a journal of their research progress, terms they searched, materials and facts that they have found, attitudes toward their project.  The research journal can also include pre-writing exercises and writing done in class.

• Bibliography - Annotated bibliographies increase your confidence that students have read the material that they cite, and allows you to approve sources before the final paper.

 

Updated:  Rebecca Jackson, 7/03; 8/15/02; 1/29/02
Original: R. Jackson & K. Kern, 2/9/00

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Last updated: Monday, March 20, 2006 09:26 AM