Dealing with Plagiarism

• Langara College Policy - Academic Integrity (pdf)
  Establishes the standards of academic conduct expected of students and persons seeking admission to the College, sets out the procedures that the College will follow when a person is alleged to breach these standards, and identifies the possible penalties.
• Avoiding Plagiarism
  A resource page for students provided by the Langara College Library.
• Avoiding Plagiarism (pdf)
  An excerpt from pages 34-39 of the College Style Sheet, Fifth Canadian Edition. Gives examples of how to avoid plagiarism, and how to correctly paraphrase, quote, summarize, and cite sources.
• Turnitin.com
  Langara's campus-wide license for Turnitin supports faculty in teaching research and writing skills to their students while encouraging academic integrity. Turnitin is a similarity checker which allows students and faculty to check assignments for matches in Turnitin's database of papers, articles, and websites. All Langara faculty have access to Turnitin through their Brightspace by D2L courses. For setting up assignments with Turnitin in Brightspace by D2L, contact edtech@langara.ca.  

• The library has a selection of books and videos on plagiarism and plagiarism prevention; click on the links provided for an up-to-date list.

Search engines are a useful tool if you suspect that a paper or portions of a paper have been downloaded from an Internet "paper mill". Here's how to carry out a search:

1. Use one or more of the larger search engines.
2. Select a distinctive phrase or sentence from a suspected chunk of text and enter it into a search engine with double quotes around it. The quotes are a command that requests the text be searched as a phrase. For example, to find this passage:
   
   Therefore, the adolescent’s first line of defense is his or her parents.
   It is up to those individuals who interact with the adolescent on a daily
   basis (parents, teachers, etc.) to be sensitive to the changes in the
   adolescent.
   
   Enter this phrase (with quotes) into the search box of the search engine:
   
   "Therefore, the adolescent’s first line of defense is his or her parents."
3. A few helpful hints:
   • Don't try to search entire paragraphs or pages of text. Most search engines will only search a dozen or fewer words at a time.
   • You may need to try several search engines, because no one search engine indexes everything on the web.
   • Search engines cannot locate papers stored in databases.
   • Contact your subject librarian or the reference desk (local 5388) if you would like help with a search

Magazine and journal articles published online are also possible sources for online plagiarism. Langara Library subscribes to a number of full text article databases which can be searched for suspicous blocks of text.

For example, to find source of the following text:

"As recently as in the 1960s, when Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic philosophy was still pervasive, depression and most other forms of mental illness were regarded as the consequences of emotional turmoil in childhood."

1. Go to the database Academic Search Complete.
2. Type distinctive keywords or phrases such as "Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic philosophy" into the search box.
   
   Some points to remember:
   • be sure to click the box beside "search within the full text of articles"
   • don't search for stop words like "in", "to", or "of"
   • separate keywords or phrases with the boolean operator "and"
   • quotation marks around phrases are permissable but not necessary
   • watch for typing errors!
   • contact your subject librarian or the reference desk (local 5388) if you would like help with a search
3. Within any retrieved articles, your search terms will be highlighted in bold text.

• Turnitin.com
  Langara's campus-wide license for Turnitin supports faculty in teaching research and writing skills to their students while encouraging academic integrity. Turnitin is a similarity checker which allows students and faculty to check assignments for matches in Turnitin's database of papers, articles, and websites. All Langara faculty have access to Turnitin through their Brightspace by D2L courses. For setting up assignments with Turnitin in Brightspace by D2L, contact edtech@langara.ca.  
  
  
• Viper anti-plagiarism scanner
  Plagiarism detection software. Unlike Turnitin, Viper does not require you to upload papers. Includes a free download for Microsoft Office.
  
  

• Internet Paper Mills
  An extensive list of paper mills, including specialized ones.

• Open Directory Project - Plagiarism
  Numerous links to sites on how to avoid and detect plagiarism for educators.

• OWL Guide to Avoiding Plagiarism
  From the Purdue University Online Writing Lab, a straightforward guide for students about deliberate and accidental plagiarism.

Click here for a selection of up-to-date, full-text scholarly articles on plagiarism in higher education from the database Academic Search Complete.

Please note that off-campus access to most articles requires a Langara ID and password.

Click here for a selection of up-to-date, full-text scholarly articles on plagiarism prevention from the database Academic Search Complete.

Please note that off-campus access to most articles requires a Langara ID and password.

Click here for a selection of up-to-date, full-text scholarly articles on plagiarism detection from the database Academic Search Complete.

Please note that off-campus access to most articles requires a Langara ID and password.