Fewer cases of plagiarism

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The online THE (Times Higher Education) recently carried a headline: Turnitin is turning up fewer cases of plagiarism. That’s good news.

The subtitle of Paul Rump’s article runs “Cases of serious cheating fall by 60 per cent, company says.”  Serious cheating is apparently defined as essays where more than 75% is made up of unoriginal material, and the figures as given in the article are impressive:

“Serious cheating” submissions to UK Universities checked by Turnitin, 2005 and 2012,
per Turnitin is turning up fewer cases of plagiarism.
2005 2012
Number of essays submitted 100,000 5,000,000
Number of essays with 75% or more “unoriginal content” 7,700 155,000

It would be quibbling to point out that the number of cases has in fact risen, that there are more cases, not fewer. What the article writer means is that the proportion of essays with 75% or more unoriginal content to total submissions has fallen by about 60%.  And that really is good. In Rump’s words:

Figures released by the firm reveal that 7.7 per cent of the essays assessed in 2005 in the UK using its software consisted of more than 75 per cent unoriginal – and therefore potentially plagiarised – content. By 2012, that figure had fallen to 3.1 per cent.

One might argue that “unoriginal content” is “potentially supportive material when appropriately cited and referenced” rather than use the term “potentially plagiarised” – but 75% plus is not supportive material; there isn’t much original material to be supported.

Whether this constitutes “serious cheating” is a moot question. It depends. Turnitin has no measure of how much unoriginal content is used for cheating purposes, how much is plagiarised. But let’s leave that be, for the moment, at least.

The same article tells us that the proportion of essays with 50% or more unoriginal content to total submissions has fallen by less than 40%. Not quite such a good rate of fall, but still pleasing.

“Serious cheating” submissions to UK Universities checked by Turnitin, 2005 and 2012,
per Turnitin is turning up fewer cases of plagiarism.

2005 2012
Number of essays submitted 100,000 5,000,000
Number of essays with 50% or more “unoriginal content” 10,500 330,000

How much these decreasing proportions are due to Turnitin’s deterrent effect and its ability to help students see where there might be problems before final submission, on the one hand, and more awareness and better education and guidance, at schools and at university levels, on the other hand, is unknown, and surely cannot be known.

It would be good to see the full report from which the statistics are culled and on which the headlines are based. And it would be good if Turnitin’s statistics were interpreted more carefully?

One thought on “Fewer cases of plagiarism

  1. Hi John,

    This is really a good news . I personally feel that TURNIT IN has help us to avaoid plagiarism. We always scan all the EE in TURNIT IN before we forward it to the IBO. Thanks for sharing this news.I will share this news to my Co ordinators and head of the school.

    N.Tenzin

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