Internet plagiarism by students

What is plagiarism?

When it comes to specifics, definitions of plagiarism vary, even over something as simple as how many sequential words must be lifted from an original text before being considered plagiarism.

For some people, it is as few as three words. For others, such as Frostburg State University psychology professor Chrismarie Baxter, PhD, it is five. The important thing is to pick your operational definition and stick to it in marking students' work, she says. Also key, she says, is watching for the "softer" forms of plagiarism--a particularly common one is copying and citing text from an original document, but failing to put it in quotes.

Halonen sorts through the confusion by thinking of plagiarism as occurring on a continuum. On one end are the students who do it inadvertently--what she calls the "benign" form. On the other end are those who do it knowingly with the goal of "outfoxing the teacher"--the "malign" form. In between are those who do it somewhat by accident or out of sloppiness.

In her view, the "malign" kind has become ever easier with the ready availability of papers on the Internet. "Students just grab it, download it and they're across the finish line," Halonen says. "They don't think about the ownership and quality issues."

Particularly problematic is the fact that Internet papers are typically written by other students, making Internet plagiarism harder to detect. As a result, it's more important than ever that plagiarism be difficult to pull off in the first place, says Halonen.