Plagiarism: Detecting, Preventing, and Understanding
The availability of web pages and electronic texts has increased concern about plagiarism. While search engines and commercial detection software offer new ways to identify sources that have not been attributed appropriately, these searching tools do not address the complicated issue of teaching students to incorporate information from other authors into their own writing. The following resources address detecting, preventing, and understanding plagiarism.
- Resources for students
- Resources for faculty
- General Resources
- Additional resources to detect possible plagiarism
If you read student writing and notice material that does not seem congruent with the student's typical sentence patterns, vocabulary, or diction, you can select a sentence from that material and place it in a search engine. Often this technique will find an original source if it is freely available on the web. Links to search engines are available in this resource.
Ask a Librarian
Librarians at the Academic Affairs Library and Health Sciences librarian can help you search for original sources that have not been attributed appropriately in a student's paper. Contact a librarian through UNC-Chapel Hill's Ask a Librarian page at http://www.lib.unc.edu/ask_menu.html.
