Important note: The primary concern of business is to make money, not to behave either ethically or unethically. If a company behaves ethically, it is doing so either by choice or in response to regulation or other external pressures. Even when a company’s business is overseeing ethical behavior in others, that doesn’t guarantee that the company is itself ethical.
Some of the links I provide below will take you to companies and, while those companies deal with ethical issues, I have no opinion about their own ethical characters. No doubt some of the people involved in those companies behave unethically in their business or personal lives. Like politicians and clergy, there are often disconnects between what they say and what they do. After years of being caught in the crossfire between companies that claim to be more ethical than the others, I have had enough. You’re on your own! In short, caveat emptor – buyer beware! — Lou Bloomfield
Software:
- CopyCatch: www.copycatchgold.com
- TurnItIn: www.turnitin.com
- MyDropBox: www.mydropbox.com
- Eve: www.canexus.com
- Plagiarism.com: www.plagiarism.com
- EVE: www.canexus.com/eve/index.shtml
- Jplag: www.jplag.de
- Copyscape: www.copyscape.com
- CodeMatch (incorporated in CodeSuite): www.ZeidmanConsulting.com/CodeSuite.htm
- ArticleChecker: www.articlechecker.com
- PlagiarismDetect.com: www.plagiarismdetect.com
- Duplichecker.com: www.duplichecker.com
Information:
- Joint Systems Information Services Review of Electronic Detection and Good
Practices in Designing out Plagiarism: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/plagiarism - Plagiarism in Colleges in USA: http://www.rbs2.com/plag.htm
- Center for Academic Integrity: www.academicintegrity.org
- Plagiarism Policy at the University of Michigan English Department: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/undergraduate/advising/plagNote.asp
- The Plagiarism Handbook: www.antiplagiarism.com
- A Faculty Guide to Cyber-Plagiarism: http://www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/plagiarism/
- Guide to Plagiarism at Indiana University, Bloomington: http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/wts/plagiarism.html
- Book: Using Sources Effectively by Robert A. Harris is designed to
educate students about how to use sources so they do not plagiarize (Free
examination copies are available to faculty by writing or faxing Pyrczak Publishing,
P.O. Box 39731 Los Angeles, CA 90039 FAX 818-246-1277.) - Plagiarism in Natural and Programming Languages: an Overview of Current
Tools and Technologies: http://ir.shef.ac.uk/cloughie/papers/plagiarism2000.pdf - Steering Clear of Plagiarism in the College Crunch: http://www.collegecrunch.org/steering-clear-of-plagiarism-in-the-college-crunch/
- Avoiding Plagiarism When Building Your Own Website: A Guide to Citing Electronic Sources” – http://www.ebizwebpages.com/avoiding-plagiarism-guide.html
Interesting Plagiarism Issues:
- History News Network for coverage of the Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns
Goodwin stories: www.historynewsnetwork.org
I need to find a software program that will help me to avoid plagiarism BEFORE I submit my Master’s Thesis to my University Review Board. The Board has software that they use to identify it and then they get back to the writer and require “rewrites, revisions, or sanctions.”
I don’t really have time for any of those actions, in order to finish my program on time. Can you recommend appropriate and comprehensive software that might help to avoid plagairism at this level of research? Someone had suggested a program they knew of, but it costs $4.00 per PAGE to use!
Thank you for considering my question.
There are services that compare a document against all the documents they have ever seen: online, in print, and submitted by individuals. Those services are normally used to check a student paper against everything ever written to ensure that that paper is original. Once the comparison is done, the student paper then becomes part of the archive against which newer papers are compared.
I don’t know if you can use those services for a single comparison. Moreover, once you use one of those services, your paper may well join the archive so that the University Review Board might find that your thesis is in the archive — submitted there by you.
I think the best approach to avoiding plagiarism is to avoid plagiarism. If you wrote the thesis yourself, using your own words and your own understanding of the material, then it will be original. If you use someone else’s words, quote them and cite the quote. If you use someone else’s ideas but not their words, cite those ideas. Be careful not to “paraphrase” — which is generally just disguised plagiarism. If the ideas didn’t go through the crucible of your own mind, then you can’t use them properly in a paper — you can’t quote them because you’ve altered the original author’s wording and you can’t write them and cite them because they aren’t fully your words, either.