Turnitin and text matching

• Dr Niaill Hayes described (at the ASKe CETL one-day conference on institutional management of plagiarism) a three year study, just finished in May 2008, funded by FDTL5 and based at the University of Lancaster and the LSE. The study attempted to 'get inside' plagiarism detection software systems to try and understand the underpinning assumptions and procedures that the system creators were using. They tested 15,000 fragments of text to try and gauge the likelihood that any student's copied text would be identified by Turnitin. They found the likelihood to be about 50% - that is, students who copied had about a 50/50 chance of being identified though of course, this is a crude number and would be impacted by other factors such as where the student copied from etc.
  
  It certainly confirms the widely held view that the software NOT finding a match does not mean the text is not copied. [apologies for all those negatives]
  
  
  The above statement was a precis provided by Jude Carroll to me, three weeks ago. Her 10 minute plagiarism video housed at the Nottingham Uni best practice web portal is well worth a look.
  
  The research also looked into the use of illegal characters (see Guardian link below) used by some to dupe the system, and also the interpretation of the originality report. Full report is out soon. We are waiting from an official reply from JISCiPAS the JISC plagiarism advisory service that supports manages the TII database UK franchise.
  
  
  To conclude
  
  Don’t over hype the capabilities of TII – as has patently already occurred across academia. The implementation and subsequent use of this type of software MUST be part of a holistic range of measures that educates both staff and students to the requirement for scholarly practice at higher levels. JISCiPAS as an organisation do this extremely well. Please take time to visit the excellent resources on their website. http://www.jiscpas.ac.uk/ . The move towards more creative ways of assessing student capabilities is beginning to gather momentum. The use of group work, vivas, computer aided assessments, and more personal reflections are all being promoted as alternatives to the traditional essay, which, coupled with the (misuse of) internet are blamed for the ease/rise of plagiarism.
  
  Further reading:
  
  Other relevant Plagiarism news is rife at present and reinforces beliefs on students “buying” more ready-made essays and the shortfalls of TII’s algorithms.


• Essay auctions 'harder to catch':
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7302641.stm

• A new AMBeR report just published by the Academy

http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/news/detail/uk_report_student_plagiarism

• Cheating rife among university students, research shows:
  http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2283422,00.html


• The recent article of students inserting illegal characters in essays, which defeats Turnitin’s algorithms: Who are you calling a %*@*!* cheat?
  http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2283351,00.html


• Time for a rethink on internet plagiarism? …In the end, the really big challenge is not to beat the cheat but to train the brain.
  http://education.guardian.co.uk/alevels/story/0,,2283659,00.html


• A new “text matching” service iParadigms have been working with CrossRef to provide a service to academic publishers to help verify the originality of academic content.
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7302641.stm (Info about the original 2007 pilot)


• Oxford Brookes University links to resources including a link to Professor Jude Carrolls handbook:
  http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsd/4_resource/plagiarism.html


• Academic Integrity Service :
  http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/learning/academic_integrity


• The Academy ICS subject centre resources:

http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/assessment/plagiarism/