Plagiarism -- Finding the Original Source
Acquaint yourself with ways in which to find the original sources of your students' plagiarized works.
Web Search Engines & Metasearch Tools
A good technique for finding plagiarized sources is to search for a unique phrase from the suspected work. Perform an exact phrase search in a search engine by typing the phrase enclosed in quotation marks.
If you retrieve nothing from a single search engine, do not assume that the work is not on the Web. Try a metasearch engine that searches several search engines at once.
Term Paper Mills
There are hundreds of sites on the Internet that offer term papers for free or for a fee. Librarians at Coastal Carolina University maintain up-to-date lists.
Internet Paper Mills
http://www.coastal.edu/library/presentations/mills2.html
Internet Subject-specific Paper Mills
http://www.coastal.edu/library/presentations/mills5.html
Full-Text Databases
The LCCC library offers access to over 100 research databases that may include the full-text of books, encyclopedias, and articles from journals, magazines and newspapers. These are commercial databases to which the library subscribes. Internet search engines do not retrieve pages from within these databases. You must search within each database directly.
Stop by or contact the LCCC Library reference staff for assistance with searching any of the research databases.
LCCC Library Research Databases
Ask a Librarian
Print Sources
Students are more likely to plagiarize from online sources, don't forget print resources. Stop by or contact the LCCC Library reference staff for assistance in identifying possible sources.
Ask a Librarian
Plagiarism Detection Software
Just like there are Internet sites for term papers, there are Internet sites (and software) for detecting plagiarized papers.
There are also Internet sites and software to detect plagiarism in computer programs.
Jplag
MOSS (Measure of Software Similiarity)
Additional resources for plagiarism:
Overviews
Prevention