Harvard University contracts with iParadigms to use plagiarism testing software
Back on October 10, 2006, Bloomberg reported:
"I thought our first clients would be Harvard, Princeton, Yale," says John Barrie, president of Oakland, California-based iParadigms LLC, the maker of Turnitin. "I now think our last clients will be Harvard, Princeton and Yale. They have the most to lose."
Less than one month later (Nov. 2), Bloomberg reports that Harvard has signed up with Barrie, iParadigms, and Turnitin. Curiously, the contract between Harvard and iParadigms was signed in September, BEFORE the Oct. 10 Bloomberg report:
The contract, signed in early September, follows a series of plagiarism scandals at Harvard, including one involving a student novelist and another over columns and cartoons published in the student newspaper. [IPBiz notes that the flap at Crimson over plagiarized columns and the separate flap over political cartoons happened AFTER September. IPBiz does not know why Bloomberg did not mention the contract in its October piece.]
The article by Emily Sachar [Nov. 2] begins:
Harvard University has become the first Ivy League institution to license anti-plagiarism software, the president of the software company said today.
Harvard College, the university's undergraduate school, licensed the software in the first weeks of September and has made it available to all of the faculty, according to John Barrie, president of iParadigms LLC, the Oakland, California- based company that makes Turnitin.com.
The contract, signed in early September, follows a series of plagiarism scandals at Harvard, including one involving a student novelist and another over columns and cartoons published in the student newspaper.
``With Harvard's decision, the message is now broadcast in spades,'' Barrie said in a telephone interview today [Nov. 2]. ``Plagiarism software and Turnitin are now part of how education works.''
Harvard spokesman Robert Mitchell today confirmed the contract with Turnitin and said the faculty will roll out the software's use on a department-by-department basis in the college, which has 6,613 students. Mitchell said he did not know why Harvard chose to adopt the software.
Sociology 189, ``Law and Social Movements,'' is using the Turnitin software this term after a faculty member requested it, Mitchell said.
***
The Sachar article concludes:
Law professors Laurence Tribe and Charles Ogletree have also apologized in the past two years for failing to attribute the work of others in books they published.
Of 56,611 undergraduates surveyed in a 2005 study by Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity, 37 percent admitted copying Internet material without attribution, compared with 10 percent in 1999.
There is no mention of using Turnitin, or other software, to test the work of professors for plagiarism. The current debate at Southern Illinois University [SIU] involves an academic administrator.
***
The website essayfraud.org has some negative comments about turnitin:
In addition to unfairly violating students' intellectual property rights and costing schools a fortune, Turnitin has become extremely ineffective as a PDS (Plagiarism Detection Service). The majority of the small percentage of students who cheat tend to do so in very intelligent ways that are undetectable. Intelligent, determined cheaters know about Turnitin, and it doesn't "scare" or dissuade them any longer.
Professors who support Turnitin may disagree about Turnitin's level of effectiveness but, of course, they only know about the instances of intentional/unintentional plagiarism that Turnitin actually detects. They don't—and never will—know about the acts of "intelligent plagiarism" that are absolutely undetectable to Turnitin. Therefore, most professors' assessment/opinion of Turnitin.com is inherently skewed and undeservedly positive.
What some professors may not understand is that Turnitin tends to catch only the most blatantly obvious, word-for-word plagiarism. The program is practically useless if a student uses a thesaurus to change every other word in a paper to a new word of equivalent meaning. Turnitin is also completely impotent in detecting that a student paid a ghostwriter to compose a paper from scratch. This is why the tried-and-true practice of professor involvement is much more effective than many professors' routine of lazy detachment and over-reliance on an imperfect software tool.
IPBiz does not know one way, or another, about the truth of the statement: The majority of the small percentage of students who cheat tend to do so in very intelligent ways that are undetectable. Switching gears to the science area, IPBiz notes Jan-Hendrik Schon used the same graphical display to represent different things in different papers, and once researchers were tipped off to this, it became very easy to see what had happened. Had people looked for this in advance, Schon's fraud would have been EASY TO DETECT. It was NOT done in "an intelligent way." The same result holds for Hwang Woo Suk and the use of duplicate photographs. Once people were tipped off, it was obvious that duplicate photographs had been used. But the smartest reviewers in the most prestigious journals (e.g., Science) didn't catch the fraud. Now, going back to the mere copying of words, Laurence Tribe's copying of words from a professor at the University of Virginia was EASY TO DETECT, but it wasn't discovered for years. The copying in "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed" was discovered by readers, not by the publishers or editors. The copying in the Civil War book on Andersonville, published by the University of Tennessee, was uncovered only when the plagiarism victim was asked to review the book. There are a lot of copyists in the real world who don't use "intelligent ways." As to students, refer to the Princeton University case wherein the student copied text from the very book that the professor gave her to use. Duh, not so intelligent.
***
The essayfraud site also has the following:
Anti-Turnitin.com Copyright Notice for Students
If you are a student who is concerned with Turnitin and/or your school violating your intellectual property rights, you can place the following copyright notice at the bottom of your paper to prevent your school from submitting your writing/ideas to Turnitin.com. If your school ignores your copyright notice and does submit your property to Turnitin or any other service/program/database, you can sue the service and/or your school for up to $150,000 per incident, as allowed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Cornell Law School).
Copyright 2006 [STUDENT NAME]. All Rights Reserved. Aside from my professor's sole, personal review as part of his/her private, single-human, software-free grading process (checking for plagiarism with Google is acceptable), neither my professor nor my academic institution may otherwise copy, transfer, distribute, reproduce, publicly/privately perform, publicly/privately claim, publicly/privately display, or create derivative works (including "digital fingerprints") of my copyrighted document (intellectual property). The same restrictions apply to Turnitin.com and all similar services if my document should somehow come into their possession. Neither my professor nor my academic institution may submit my copyrighted document, in whole or in part, to be copied, transformed, manipulated, altered, or otherwise used by or stored at Turnitin.com (iParadigms, LLC) or any other physical or electronic database or retrieval system without my personal, explicit, voluntary, uncoerced, written permission. Regardless of supposed intent (e.g., "to create a digital fingerprint"), no part of my copyrighted document may be temporarily or permanently transferred, by any party, to Turnitin.com or any other service, program, database, or system for analysis, comparison, storage, or any other purpose whatsoever. Violators will be monetarily punished to the fullest extent allowed by the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and/or international law.
Students can Set a Trap for Violators
The first step in preventing your school from submitting your intellectual property to Turnitin is to place the aforementioned copyright notice at the bottom of your paper. The second step is to make sure that if your professor ignores your copyright notice, you have the necessary evidence to make your entire school district legally regret summarily dismissing your rights.
At least 24 hours prior to submitting the paper to your professor (with copyright notice included), send a copy of the paper through the postal system, addressed to your mother and/or father, at their address. Seal the envelope extremely well. Tell your parents to expect the envelope, but make sure that they do NOT open the envelope when it arrives! Store the envelope somewhere safe.
If you later find out that your professor submitted the paper to TurnItIn, your postmarked (dated) envelope—containing an exact copy of the copyrighted document that you submitted to your professor—will serve as evidence that you clearly warned your professor/school in advance that they may not transfer or grant third-party license to your work. They will have no defense, and you will almost certainly be awarded monetary compensation if you file a civil suit.
IPBiz notes: what happens to folks who place copyright notices on works that aren't registered at the Copyright Office? At a different level, who does own the copyright of work that is done to meet a contractual requirement between student and university?
"I thought our first clients would be Harvard, Princeton, Yale," says John Barrie, president of Oakland, California-based iParadigms LLC, the maker of Turnitin. "I now think our last clients will be Harvard, Princeton and Yale. They have the most to lose."
Less than one month later (Nov. 2), Bloomberg reports that Harvard has signed up with Barrie, iParadigms, and Turnitin. Curiously, the contract between Harvard and iParadigms was signed in September, BEFORE the Oct. 10 Bloomberg report:
The contract, signed in early September, follows a series of plagiarism scandals at Harvard, including one involving a student novelist and another over columns and cartoons published in the student newspaper. [IPBiz notes that the flap at Crimson over plagiarized columns and the separate flap over political cartoons happened AFTER September. IPBiz does not know why Bloomberg did not mention the contract in its October piece.]
The article by Emily Sachar [Nov. 2] begins:
Harvard University has become the first Ivy League institution to license anti-plagiarism software, the president of the software company said today.
Harvard College, the university's undergraduate school, licensed the software in the first weeks of September and has made it available to all of the faculty, according to John Barrie, president of iParadigms LLC, the Oakland, California- based company that makes Turnitin.com.
The contract, signed in early September, follows a series of plagiarism scandals at Harvard, including one involving a student novelist and another over columns and cartoons published in the student newspaper.
``With Harvard's decision, the message is now broadcast in spades,'' Barrie said in a telephone interview today [Nov. 2]. ``Plagiarism software and Turnitin are now part of how education works.''
Harvard spokesman Robert Mitchell today confirmed the contract with Turnitin and said the faculty will roll out the software's use on a department-by-department basis in the college, which has 6,613 students. Mitchell said he did not know why Harvard chose to adopt the software.
Sociology 189, ``Law and Social Movements,'' is using the Turnitin software this term after a faculty member requested it, Mitchell said.
***
The Sachar article concludes:
Law professors Laurence Tribe and Charles Ogletree have also apologized in the past two years for failing to attribute the work of others in books they published.
Of 56,611 undergraduates surveyed in a 2005 study by Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity, 37 percent admitted copying Internet material without attribution, compared with 10 percent in 1999.
There is no mention of using Turnitin, or other software, to test the work of professors for plagiarism. The current debate at Southern Illinois University [SIU] involves an academic administrator.
***
The website essayfraud.org has some negative comments about turnitin:
In addition to unfairly violating students' intellectual property rights and costing schools a fortune, Turnitin has become extremely ineffective as a PDS (Plagiarism Detection Service). The majority of the small percentage of students who cheat tend to do so in very intelligent ways that are undetectable. Intelligent, determined cheaters know about Turnitin, and it doesn't "scare" or dissuade them any longer.
Professors who support Turnitin may disagree about Turnitin's level of effectiveness but, of course, they only know about the instances of intentional/unintentional plagiarism that Turnitin actually detects. They don't—and never will—know about the acts of "intelligent plagiarism" that are absolutely undetectable to Turnitin. Therefore, most professors' assessment/opinion of Turnitin.com is inherently skewed and undeservedly positive.
What some professors may not understand is that Turnitin tends to catch only the most blatantly obvious, word-for-word plagiarism. The program is practically useless if a student uses a thesaurus to change every other word in a paper to a new word of equivalent meaning. Turnitin is also completely impotent in detecting that a student paid a ghostwriter to compose a paper from scratch. This is why the tried-and-true practice of professor involvement is much more effective than many professors' routine of lazy detachment and over-reliance on an imperfect software tool.
IPBiz does not know one way, or another, about the truth of the statement: The majority of the small percentage of students who cheat tend to do so in very intelligent ways that are undetectable. Switching gears to the science area, IPBiz notes Jan-Hendrik Schon used the same graphical display to represent different things in different papers, and once researchers were tipped off to this, it became very easy to see what had happened. Had people looked for this in advance, Schon's fraud would have been EASY TO DETECT. It was NOT done in "an intelligent way." The same result holds for Hwang Woo Suk and the use of duplicate photographs. Once people were tipped off, it was obvious that duplicate photographs had been used. But the smartest reviewers in the most prestigious journals (e.g., Science) didn't catch the fraud. Now, going back to the mere copying of words, Laurence Tribe's copying of words from a professor at the University of Virginia was EASY TO DETECT, but it wasn't discovered for years. The copying in "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed" was discovered by readers, not by the publishers or editors. The copying in the Civil War book on Andersonville, published by the University of Tennessee, was uncovered only when the plagiarism victim was asked to review the book. There are a lot of copyists in the real world who don't use "intelligent ways." As to students, refer to the Princeton University case wherein the student copied text from the very book that the professor gave her to use. Duh, not so intelligent.
***
The essayfraud site also has the following:
Anti-Turnitin.com Copyright Notice for Students
If you are a student who is concerned with Turnitin and/or your school violating your intellectual property rights, you can place the following copyright notice at the bottom of your paper to prevent your school from submitting your writing/ideas to Turnitin.com. If your school ignores your copyright notice and does submit your property to Turnitin or any other service/program/database, you can sue the service and/or your school for up to $150,000 per incident, as allowed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Cornell Law School).
Copyright 2006 [STUDENT NAME]. All Rights Reserved. Aside from my professor's sole, personal review as part of his/her private, single-human, software-free grading process (checking for plagiarism with Google is acceptable), neither my professor nor my academic institution may otherwise copy, transfer, distribute, reproduce, publicly/privately perform, publicly/privately claim, publicly/privately display, or create derivative works (including "digital fingerprints") of my copyrighted document (intellectual property). The same restrictions apply to Turnitin.com and all similar services if my document should somehow come into their possession. Neither my professor nor my academic institution may submit my copyrighted document, in whole or in part, to be copied, transformed, manipulated, altered, or otherwise used by or stored at Turnitin.com (iParadigms, LLC) or any other physical or electronic database or retrieval system without my personal, explicit, voluntary, uncoerced, written permission. Regardless of supposed intent (e.g., "to create a digital fingerprint"), no part of my copyrighted document may be temporarily or permanently transferred, by any party, to Turnitin.com or any other service, program, database, or system for analysis, comparison, storage, or any other purpose whatsoever. Violators will be monetarily punished to the fullest extent allowed by the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and/or international law.
Students can Set a Trap for Violators
The first step in preventing your school from submitting your intellectual property to Turnitin is to place the aforementioned copyright notice at the bottom of your paper. The second step is to make sure that if your professor ignores your copyright notice, you have the necessary evidence to make your entire school district legally regret summarily dismissing your rights.
At least 24 hours prior to submitting the paper to your professor (with copyright notice included), send a copy of the paper through the postal system, addressed to your mother and/or father, at their address. Seal the envelope extremely well. Tell your parents to expect the envelope, but make sure that they do NOT open the envelope when it arrives! Store the envelope somewhere safe.
If you later find out that your professor submitted the paper to TurnItIn, your postmarked (dated) envelope—containing an exact copy of the copyrighted document that you submitted to your professor—will serve as evidence that you clearly warned your professor/school in advance that they may not transfer or grant third-party license to your work. They will have no defense, and you will almost certainly be awarded monetary compensation if you file a civil suit.
IPBiz notes: what happens to folks who place copyright notices on works that aren't registered at the Copyright Office? At a different level, who does own the copyright of work that is done to meet a contractual requirement between student and university?
posted by Lawrence B. Ebert at 12:48 PM
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