Web Site Designed to Catch Internet Plagiarism

But one Internet company has a program to curb such cheating.

More than 100 universities, including Duke University, and thousands of high schools, subscribe to turnitin.com, a program used to catch Internet plagiarism.

The program works when students or instructors type questionable text on the Web site.

The program scans an Internet database for copied or unattributed material and gives an originality report to the student or professor with the questionable text highlighted.

Melissa Lipscomb, vice president of business affairs with turnitin.com, said many students either download an entire text or cut and paste from different sources without attributing the information. "The fact that our client base is growing exponentially testifies that there is an identifiable problem," Lipscomb said.

Businesses have begun to cash in on the demand for papers on the Internet.

Internet cheating does not only include students who cut and paste information from Web sites, but also those who purchase pre-written papers.

People can buy a year's subscription to 4termpapers.com for $14.95. The subscription enables people to search a database for a topic and print out the paper. They also offer custom written papers and same day delivery.

Greg Timmons, manager of 4termpapers.com, said the company's goal is not to encourage plagiarism but to offer papers for students to look at as a model. "We by no means condone the cheating, but I'm sure it happens," he said. "I'd like to think a lot of (students) are using it for the research or model purposes or using it as a starting out point."

Timmons said programs like turnitin.com might curb Internet cheating, but said it would not be able to scan their database because they would have to have a subscription first.

Donald McCabe, professor of organization management at Rutgers University, has completed several surveys on cheating. He said that of the 21 universities surveyed, 10 to 15 percent said they cut and paste sections from the Internet without attributing it, and 5 to 10 percent said they downloaded an entire text.

McCabe said the universities with honor codes had a lower percentage of cheating, but only by 1 or 2 percentage points. "A concept of having an honor code is not enough. It has to be a working strategy," he said. "UNC is an example of a traditional honor code that has lost its way."

Dave Gilbert, UNC assistant dean of students and judicial programs officer, said the University is not immune to cheating.

Although UNC officials are considering subscribing to an Internet scanning service, Gilbert said the school's current focus is trying to use preventative measures to stop cheating.

Gilbert said he talked to incoming freshmen at C-TOPS and athletes about Internet cheating. "We don't look at electronic copying any different than we do any type of plagiarism," he said. "The system treats them the same as a student opening up a book in a library and copying out of a book and not citing it."

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.