Plagiarism and Technology: A Tool for Coping With Plagiarism

major problems in education (Singhal, 1982) and has long been recognized as such in higher education (Davis, Grover, Becker, & McGregor, 1992; Leming, 1978; McCabe, Treviño, & Butterfield, 2001). Research indicates that a high percentage of undergraduate students cheat (Collison, 1990; Jendrek, 1989; Singhal; Stern & Havlicek, 1986; Tom & Borin, 1988) and that this number has increased dramatically over the past 3 decades (McCabe et al.). Cheating is also prevalent among graduate students, with studies indicating that they are as likely to cheat as their undergraduate counterparts (Brown, 1995). Although students believe that there is less unethical behavior in the business world than in the classroom (Buckley, Wiese, & Harvey, 1998), two studies found a strong relationship between the severity of academic dishonesty among students who were undergraduates and the severity of dishonesty later when these same students were in the working world (Nonis & Swift, 2001; Sims, 1993). Thus, academic dishonesty has far-reaching ramifications beyond the field of higher education. Our purpose in this article is to address the issue of plagiarism, a category of cheating that researchers suggest has increased over the past 2 decades (Ashworth, Bannister, & Thorne, 1997; Larkham & Manns, 2002; McCabe et al., 2001). In part, this increase in plagiarism is related to students’ greater knowledge of and familiarity with information systems, the Internet, online electronic information sources, and the ease with which information can be downloaded and used (Ashworth et al., 1997; Campbell, Swift, & Denton, 2000). Although some researchers appropriately suggest teaching and assignment methods to combat the ubiquitous availability of plagiarized material (Mello, 2000), there is a paucity of research addressing the use of systems that automate the detection of plagiarism. Thus, it is important to explore the potential of using current technology to identify and deter plagiarism. To be widely acceptable, these methods must not entail significantly greater time requirements than traditional grading procedures. As such, this study had a dual purpose. First, we wanted to conduct an exploratory study to determine whether the use of an online plagiarism detection system can reduce student plagiarism. Second, we sought to determine whether that system would perform in an acceptable manner in an academic environment.