Plagiarism: Prevention and Detection Strategies

Education | | Academic Integrity and Honor Pledge | Prevention | Detection | Action | Resources | Links

Affirm the importance of academic integrity and reduce opportunities to engage in academic dishonesty

  • Discuss the ethical side of plagiarism with your students.
  • Include the definition of plagiarism, clarify your expectations and student responsibilities in your syllabus. If your assignments involve teamwork, your syllabus should include definitions of acceptable forms of collaboration and responsibilities of project members for plagiarism.
    Helpful UC resources for you and your students:
  • Share your stories of dealing with student plagiarism.
  • Use library resources and online tutorials and quizzes to explain concepts related to plagiarism (paraphrasing, direct quotes, citing sources, etc.) and check the students' understanding of those concepts:
    • Tutorials/tests for advanced undergraduate and graduate students:
      • How to Recognize Plagiarism - this tutorial from the Indiana University includes plagiarism cases, examples of appropriately documented and plagiarized materials and practice exercise with instant feedback. Includes a test available to non-IU students. Students who complete the test successfully get a printable certificate.
    • Tutorials/tests for lower division undergraduate students:
      • Acknowledging Sources - this brief tutorial from the University of Texas Arlington Library includes an at-a-glance citation chart (what you need to cite and related notes) and a 10-question test that provides instant feedback and can be e-mailed to the instructor.
      • NEW! Joining the Conversation: Scholarly Research and Academic Integrity (guest mode). The tutorial from Georgetown University emphasizes the "whys" of citing sources and presents scholarship as an ongoing conversation. The tutorial includes a quiz with instant feedback, but some questions are specific to the institution.
      • Plagiarism: The Crime of Intellectual Kidnapping - this tutorial from San Jose State University (also available in a Flash version) includes good examples of acceptable and unacceptable paraphrasing. Includes a downloadable (PDF) 13-question quiz.
        Individuals and institutions may copy Plagiarism: The Crime of Intellectual Kidnapping text, graphics, animations, and scripts to use on their own campuses and customize in whole or in part (see the Open Publication License Agreement).
      • Plagiarism: this fun video from Paul Robeson Library (Rutgers University) is accompanied by a quiz (no printable results).
    • Use scenarios to teach students what constitutes plagiarism.
    • Plagiarism workshop (Word document) - The activity sheet from the Higher Education Academy Psychology Network (United Kingdom) includes a number of activitie, including the popular "Wher do you draw the line?" exercise.
    • The Plagiarism Handbook: Strategies for Preventing, Detecting and Dealing with Plagiarism by Robert Harris (link to catalog record) includes many useful tips for faculty and cartoons that can be used to discuss plagiarism issues with students. Some of the ideas on this page are modified from that book. The book also includes a “Citation Quiz” and “Using Sources Quiz.”
      See additional library resources.

Academic Integrity and Honor Pledge

In pursuit of its teaching, learning and research goals, the University of Cincinnati holds its students, faculty and administrators to the highest ethical standards defined by The Center for Academic Integrity as “a commitment, even in the face of adversity, to five fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility”.  Although not all students are subject to a college honor code or pledge, every student is bound by the academic misconduct provisions of this code enforced to assure academic integrity.  When dishonest students cheat to gain unfair competitive advantage over other students, they cheat themselves out of a decent education.  

Some faculty members and academic units may require students before taking tests and/or when submitting assignments to sign a pledge.  The pledge may contain language such as: “On my honor I pledge that this work of mine does not violate the U.C. Student Code of Conduct provisions on cheating and plagiarism.”  Honor pledges serve primarily as a teaching tool; unless a college has a mandatory honor code, pledges are used at the discretion of the instructor.

Academic Integrity & Honor Pledge Campaign FAQ (Word document)

Plagiarism prevention strategies

SafeAssign™ is a plagiarism prevention service, offered by Blackboard. Instructors can set up SafeAssignments in their Blackboard courses and let students submit papers to these assignments. As students submit papers, they are checked against SafeAssign's comprehensive databases of source material.  The papers will then be delivered to instructors through the Blackboard Learning System together with the originality reports, with the results of the matching process, attached to them. (This information is taken from the SafeAssign Wiki, where you can learn more about SafeAssign, see sample reports, etc).

Please note that when students submit a Blackboard written assignment for an instructor using the new text-matching software they will see the following:

Please note that material submitted for this assignment will be  screened by Blackboard's SafeAssign feature against a variety of  databases. The purpose of this feature is to minimize plagiarism and  to help educate students about the proper citation of any borrowed  content. For more information about plagiarism and citation  conventions, please see  <http://www.libraries.uc.edu/instruction/students/plagiarism.html> As part of the submission process, you will also have the opportunity  to leave a copy of your work within the SafeAssign Global Reference  Database, which helps to protect the originality of your work across  institutions. This step is voluntary and you may choose not to  participate in this part of the submission process. For more  information please check with your instructor.

See the following sources for plagiarism prevention tips:
Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers by Robert Harris
Plagiarism Stoppers: A Teacher’s Guide by Jane Sharka at NCSUD
CyberPlagiarism: Detection and Prevention (Penn State)
Preventing Plagiarism  (Preventing and Detecting Plagiarism, University of Texas at Austin)
Additional Web links

Make it clear to the students that you know their writing style.

Work with librarians to develop creative assignments.

Detecting plagiarized papers

Taking action

Faculty Guidelines for Responding to Academic Misconduct (Word document) are intended to help faculty members respond to cheating and plagiarism. They are based on the 2007 Student Code of Conduct that assures due process for students accused of misconduct while enabling course instructors to impose appropriate sanctions for academic misconduct.

Resources on academic plagiarism in the UC Libraries' collections

To search for resources on plagiarism and academic integrity in the UC Library catalog and the OhioLINK Library Catalog, use the following subject heading: Plagiarism (click here for search results in the UC library catalog) or Plagiarism - Prevention (click here for search results in the UC library catalog). This subject heading will also retrieve relevant periodical articles in the Academic Search Complete database.

Featured books

Student plagiarism in an online world : problems and solutions. Hershey, PA : Information Science Reference, c2008. Langsam and CAS stacks, PN167 .S78 2008  (link to catalog record). Connect to resource online.

NEW! DeSena, Laura Hennessey. Preventing plagiarism : tips and techniques. Urbana, Ill. : National Council of Teachers of English, c2007. Langsam stacks, PN167 .D47 2007 (link to catalog record).

NEW! Lampert, Lynn D. Combating student plagiarism : an academic librarian's guide. Oxford : Chandos, 2008. Langsam stacks, Z675.U5 L36 2008 (link to catalog record).

Marsh, Bill. Plagiarism : alchemy and remedy in higher education. Albany : State University of New York Press, c2007. Langsam Stacks PN167 .M285 2007  (link to catalog record)

Posner, Richard A. The little book of plagiarism. New York : Pantheon Books, c2007. Langsam Stacks K1485 .P67 2007 (link to catalog record).

Robin, Ron Theodore. Scandals and scoundrels : seven cases that shook the academy. Berkeley : University of California Press, c2004. Langsam Stacks, Clermont Stacks PN167 .R63 2004  (link to catalog record)

Stern, Linda. What every student should know about avoiding plagiarism. New York : Pearson/Longman, c2007. Langsam Stacks PN167 .S74 2007  (link to catalog record)

Plagiarism links

Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices. " The statement is intended to provide helpful suggestions and clarifications so that instructors, administrators, and students can work together more effectively in support of excellence in teaching and learning."

OVCR - Plagiarism
A comprehensive collection of links to online articles about plagiarism, copyright and intellectual freedom, resources on plagiarism for instructors and students, plagiarism case studies, detection tools, and term paper sites. The links have been carefully selected for the research Ethics pages on the site of the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Teaching Ethics for Research, Scholarship, & Practice: Instructional Materials
A wonderful collection of resources on ethical issues, including plagiarism, from the University of Minnesota. Materials are organized by ethical issue, discipline, and format.

Badke, William. "Give Plagiarism the Weight It Deserves." Online; Sep/Oct2007, Vol. 31 Issue 5, p58-60, 3p. (Online, requires off-campus access).

Suggest new resources on plagiarism for this page.

The content of this page was originally developed by the Academic Integrity Committee in Spring 2003. The page was updated by the Academic Integrity Committee and University Libraries Instructional Faculty in September 2007. Latest update January 2009.