Identifying Plagiarism
Case 2 - Plagiarism and the web
A Subject Coordinator uses a software tool to check for plagiarism in the papers submitted by his second year students. Plagiarism detection software can search a range of sources including ProQuest, the web and databases of past students' assignments. The Coordinator uses this software tool as it can provide evidence about whether deliberate and/or inadvertent plagiarism has or has not occurred.
The Coordinator found a student's assignment that contained similar phrases and sentences to those available on several websites. After carefully checking the sites against the student's answer, the Coordinator determined that the student had copied a small number of sentences and phrases from each of a number of websites without acknowledging the author or sources of the sentences or phrases.
The student informed the Coordinator that he had worked hard to find information on the web and that much time-consuming searching was involved to find relevant information. He had completed his own research, included his own analysis and constructed his own answer to the question. "I only copied two or three words, or in one case a sentence, from a couple of sites" he said. "Also" he said, "I have trouble referencing material from the web because often the information I need to reference correctly is not included on the site".
Has this student plagiarised?