Duke hosts talk on plagiarism

The Chronicle "My guess is most students are busting their ass and pissed off the guy next to them is cheating," said John Barrie, the co-founder of Plagiarism.org, a Web site created to aid teachers in their efforts to catch plagiarists. "We wanted to level the playing field." Last Thursday night, Barrie, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, spoke to a handful of Duke University students, faculty members and administrators to discuss academic integrity in the Internet age. He appeared with Blaine Vess, a freshman at North Central College who operates a Web site that posts term papers submitted from college students across the nation. "People are getting away with cheating in such a bold-face, blatant sort of way that they think they can't get caught," Barrie said. "It is so easy to go on to the Internet and cut and paste. All we're doing is keeping people honest." Plagiarism.org provides a check on plagiarism by allowing students -- at the request of their professors -- to submit papers for an analysis that includes comparing the paper with others from the site's extensive collection. The results of the comparison allow professors to decide whether a given term paper may constitute plagiarism. Vess, however, rejected the idea that his Web site -- OPPapers.com -- is a tool for plagiarists, arguing instead that he created his Web site as a place for students to exchange intellectual and academic ideas. "Believe it or not, people actually use [my site] for reference," Vess said. "It's a term paper reference site, not a site meant to encourage plagiarism. We don't do that." Vess said his site -- which was founded by a group of students at Columbia University -- receives more than 1,500 hits a day and has over 2,500 papers online. He added that 20 to 50 papers are added to his library each day. "I think a lot of papers on there aren't great and need work. I've never used one," he said. Duke administrators said they have been concerned about plagiarism for some time. Kacie Wallace, Duke's associate dean for judicial affairs, said the school may be interested in using services such as Barrie's to help both students and teachers deal with plagiarism. "In a number of plagiarism cases, students don't understand they've plagiarized," said Wallace, who was on hand for Thursday's discussion. "We have an opportunity to explore this technology as both an enforcement and educational tool." The discussion was sponsored by the Duke Honor Council as part of its spring series on ethics and integrity.