Plagiarism

Plagiarism Detection, Text Matching and Turnitin

Plagiarism is the use of someone else's words or ideas without attribution, as if they were your own. Tools used to automatically check submitted work for possible plagiarism operate by identifying similarities with other sources. Turnitin is the leading originality checking and plagiarism prevention service used by millions of students and staff, and thousands of institutions worldwide. Turnitin scans a range of academic databases, including a large database of previously submitted essays, books, journals and the internet. 

If you have time, check out this resource:

• Plagiarism Quiz - University of London

Referencing and Intellectual Property are discussed in more detail in Unit 4.

Assessments Facts 

• It has been estimated that each year undergraduates in UK higher education submit at least 50 million sides of A4 for assessment (in total, not each!)
• One of the earliest known exams was the Imperial Examination in ancient China. This was used to select candidates for government positions and ran for 1300 years from 605 AD until 1905
• Worldwide there are over 15,000 institutions using Turnitin
• The term plagiarism comes from the Latin word "plagarus" (to kidnap)

[Link to institutional information about plagiarism]