Plagiarism Detection and Prevention

While it is true that plagiarism detection software manages to identify a significant number of plagiarisms, and that several educators and educational institutions have found it useful, it is also true that the software, the various algorithms are not-and cannot be-powerful enough to scour the whole of the web. Transient pages cannot be used.

Powerresearcher has adopted an interesting and positive approach in their attempt to create a market out of prevention, rather than detection. Their claim is to make redundant the need to plagiarize, by assisting researchers to manage time and projects.

In our earlier article we have already suggested a positive approach to detection, suggesting that perhaps the individual style of a student, or an author, could be identified, and an uncharacteristic part of an essay could be marked as being of dubious origin. This has the advantage of not making negative assumptions about a piece of writing.

Other Uses

It becomes clear that plagiarism itself-as opposed to students' plagiarism-could be curtailed by such software. Any area that involves frequent writing is a potential 'plagiarist area'. Apart from the academic domain, there are other domains that involve very frequent writing. News reporting is another domain in which people have to write very frequently (several articles per day, sometimes by the hour), and plagiarism detection and prevention software would be of immediate use in this area. Book publishers, and editors working in publishing houses too could make use of such software.

Impact on Other Technologies

Technologies that involve duplication detection could benefit from ideas in plagiarism detection software. Patent records, and companies that manage, create, or are otherwise related to patents could certainly benefit from such software. Companies involved in text analysis too could perhaps take a look at plagiarism detection and prevention software.

It is clear that what we have available is not entirely adequate, however, this area is definitely worth looking at, and the software could, after enhancement, become useful in areas larger than plagiarism detection.

Plagiarism series concluded.