Plagiarism Detection Software

Plagiarism is a pervasive form of academic dishonesty in collegiate settings. Since it distorts learning and assessment, deterring and detecting it are crucial to maintaining academic integrity. Large class sizes and an increase in writing assignments that result from writing across the curriculum combine to make detection of plagiarism burdensome. The concomitant rapid increase of written material on the Internet and its ease of appropriation contribute to the problem. Plagiarism detection software has emerged in response. The most prominent implementation compares submissions against items in a database and then adds them to that database. It outputs measures of possible plagiarism. Faculty use of the detection software should be reevaluated because of issues related to its efficacy and because of ethical and legal concerns.