By Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.
Every day, all around the globe, a number of online students receive the dreaded message, "I'm sorry, but your paper has been flagged by our plagiarism detecting program as having problematic content."
It's a deliberately vague statement, intended to protect the institution and the instructor, but the meaning is clear.
Imagine for a moment that the recipient of that message was you. Your first reaction is shock and disbelief. Something is terribly wrong with your paper. Wrong? How could that be? You feel your heart pound and your skin tingle. What happened? You tried very hard with this paper. You were very careful to do outside research for this paper, as required by the instructions. When searching for information for your paper, you went to your favorite places on the Internet, and they looked very good to you. You listed the URL at the end of the paper. Further, you were very careful to use five or six sources, not just one. What went wrong?
Students often unintentionally plagiarize when they write their term papers. The ways that this happens are numerous; it is important to recognize each one. It is also important to understand how popular plagiarism detecting programs like turnitin.com work, and how and why the results they yield can be illuminating and frustrating.
Varieties of Unintentional Plagiarism
Here are a few:
1. Patchwork Quilt
After students have completed their online research and have written annotations for their bibliographies, it is tempting to weave them together to create one's paper. While it is always a good idea to use references and outside sources, the problem with using too many block quotes is that the integrity of the paper can be compromised. The result can be a patchwork quilt of block quotes, with as much as 90 percent of the paper consisting of material gleaned from sources. This will register as plagiarism. One should never have more than 15 to 20 percent of direct quotes or block quotes.
2. Wikipedia — "Wiki-cosis"
Wikipedia should never be used as a course in an academic paper. The information is not reliable, and it can be incomplete and biased. It is amazing how many people consider Wikipedia to be authoritative. Granted, it is a good place to start, but it should be used as a point of departure. The over-reliance on Wikipedia can lead to something one could consider "wiki-cosis" — toxic levels of incomplete and inaccurate information derived from Wikipedia. It is easy to spot a paper that has information that has been copied and pasted from Wikipedia. The block of text will have a pale blue background.
3. Link-Only Citing — Insufficient Citation
Some students think that it is sufficient to simply create a list of links at the end of the paper. They may or may not set off their quoted material in block quotes, and they may fail to put quoted phrases or sentences between quotation marks. Needless to say, this will be flagged as plagiarism.
4. Block Paraphrasing — Word Substitution
Realizing that they cannot just copy and paste entire sections of papers, some students simply substitute certain words and create close-to-the-original paraphrases. Often they fail to cite the source using in-text citations and a reference at the end of the paper. While summaries and overviews of a work or a source can be useful, to copy the structure and argument of the block, and to change the wording only slightly is not considered academically appropriate.
5. Encyclopedia Article Template
Some people turn to online encyclopedias for their term papers. For example, they may select the life and times of William Shakespeare as their topic. They then go to Encyclopedia Britannica or another online source, and they copy the structure, reproduce the argument, and paraphrase the ideas without giving any credit at all, except for perhaps a listing at the end of the paper. Why is this not acceptable? A paper written by the student should contain the student's own ideas and own analysis.
6. Son of Son of Source
Many blogs and news sources regularly copy material from wire sources (Associate Press) or from each other. The student may not realize that the citations are incorrect, and that it appears that they are deliberately obfuscating or masking the original source of ideas. When looking for information and checking out sources, try to find the provenance of an idea or a citation. Peer reviewed journals will more clearly present idea provenances than will newspaper articles or blogs.
Dirty Tricks that will Ping Plagiarism Detecting Programs
1. Peer reviews. This could be unintentional.
Depending upon where the discussion boards occur, and whether or not they are password protected, individuals work and drafts could end up in search engine results. Since plagiarism detection programs spider the Internet, it is likely that a draft or paper posted there as a part of a peer review process will show up. It is possible it would appear to be authored by someone else, if the peer reviewer is the one doing the posting.
2. Frenemy. Have a friend who is into playing tricks, "punking" you?
You may have an enemy/friend whom you have emailed your paper. You may have asked them to take a look at it and comment on it. You may simply have wanted to share. Whatever it was, if they took your paper and posted it on their blog, on the Web, or somewhere else, it's possible it would show up in search engine (and plagiarism detection) programs. Your instructor will think it was written by your frenemy if there is no specific information attributing it to you.
In conclusion…
It is possible that a large percentage of online learners have inadvertently created documents that could be flagged as problematic by plagiarism detection programs. Thus, it is very helpful to know the pitfalls, as well as the proper procedures for citing materials in research papers.
Download the accompanying podcast on this topic: "Unintentional Plagiarism" (5.3 MB).