I know many Unis out there are using automated plagiarism detection software such as “Turn it in”, some of them picking up pretty high levels of copying amongst their student body.
The other day as I was wandering near the Ref I saw a poster proclaming “Turn it out”, protesting against automated plagiarism detection systems and pointing out that amongst other thing the company’s making profits from your work, and your work may not be secure in its database.
I know when I studied ComSci there was some homegrown semantic analysis software, which would pick up code which was similar even if it students had changed the variable names. Of course some of them weren’t even smart enough to change the comments which had other people’s names in them!
What I’d be interested to know is how many Academics’ papers would fare if fed into such systems. After all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
