Plagiarism Detection Software
Carl
Plagiarism detection software is being used by Capella instructors.
One particular software package that appears to be in use is "My Drop
Box" ( www.mydropbox.com ).
Another one that you can obtain for FREE as shareware from TUCOWS (
www.tucows.com ) is called EVE 2.4. It is available as shareware. I
purchased the most recent version (Ver. 2.5) of EVE for $20 from the
company's web site at the following URL:
http://www.canexus.com/eve/download.shtml
I found that this tool is useful to verify that you have all references
in your papers cited to the proper URL.
I hope that these tools prove to be useful for you. I do not advocate
plagiarism, but I am concerned that this type of software may flag your
project as being plagiarized.
In my case, I am new to the APA format, and for me, citing references
properly per APA is an art to be learned. In a recent project I chose
to include two instances of what I later discovered to be 'block
quotes' - any quote over 40 words is formatted and indented
differently, with NO quotation marks!
The quoted text in my project was quoted as a 'string of quotations',
but not in the proper block quote format. I had cited my reference for
this string of quotes at the beginning of the string of quotes.
As a result of this, the plagiarism robot saw my text strings as being
*directly copied and pasted* from an internet source URL (as they in
fact had been). Needless to say, my instructor quickly descended upon
me and wanted an explanation for my apparent case of *plagiarism*.
I back-peddled to block quote the identified text blocks as *block
quotes*, but found that the APA manual was vague with its reference as
to where to position the cites. I opted to place my cites at both the
beginning and again at the end of each of my two block quotes. I am
waiting for feedback from the instructor to see if I cited it
correctly.
Since this is the information age, and with each passing day more and
more material becomes available on the internet, I wonder how accurate
the plagiarism software can be over time. I would assume that the
chances of the plagiarism robot finding and flagging student-authored
text string matches to internet-based text strings would increase
EXPONENTIALLY over time. I have not researched this in depth, but my
intuition tells me this may be the case. If there is data available on
this, I would like to see it.
So, in order to be proactive, I think it is a good idea to secure your
own copy of plagiarism software and check your own original work prior
to submitting it to your instructor. Doing so could save you some
embarrassment and humility, verify your cited references, protect you
from having to explain the robot's findings to your course instructor.
(Major stress and time saver here!)