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Among the many services that compare text submissions to Internet
documents are Turnitin and EVE2. Finding Turnitin
inadequate due in great measure to its dubious writing model, in which a student
presumably submits successive refinements of a paper until it "passes" the
plagiarism test, UW selected EVE2. However, as of 2009, we cannot make EVE2 yield
dependable results. We no longer support or provide this software.
TESTS of 2002 (Adapted from 20 September 2002 workshop notes)
NOW OUT-OF-DATE
TEST RESULTS-- EVE2EVE2 does not provide direct links between passages from the submitted text and source documents found. In other words, to
discover plagiarism, the instructor would have to look through the source documents found, perhaps with a string search, to spot exact duplication.
The following tests use these EVE2 settings: Quick search, 50% cutoff
- A Robert Frost essay appearing as an HTML (text) file at
www.robertfrost.org/essay.html
>> Submitted as "The Most of Rhodora" by Lilliwhite Hands
>>>> Result: Original source (HTML essay) found. 30% match
- A cut-and-paste combination of two reviews of the book
"Xanthippic Dialogues" by Roger Scruton, one at
www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/2564/scruton.htm and one at
www.staugustine.net/review.html
>> Submitted as "Xanthippe's Presence" by Constant Cadger
>>>> Result: One original source, the Geocities page, was found; the St. Augustine Press page no longer on the web. 43% match
- A short report, four paragraphs with headings, by someone named Justin
on a Geocities page at
http://www.geocities.com/lizards_312/Justins-Universe-dense-objects.html
>> Submitted as "Afterlives of Stars" by Justice Knott (verbatim,
in full)
>>>> Result: Original source (Geocities page) found. 75% match.
- An essay from David Corker at the University of East Anglia
(American Studies) on methaphor, available at
http://www.uea.ac.uk/eas/People/corker/In%20Defence%20of%20Metaphor.htm
>> Submitted as "Metaphor Rules" by Diablo Corker (verbatim, in full)
>>>> Result: Original source found (UEA faculty page). 100% match.
- The first seven pages of an essay on tourism in national parks from
a Dutch university source, in PDF form, by Jan van der Straaten, found
by searching for "environment rain forest species" in Google, at
http://greywww.kub.nl:2080/greyfiles/worc/1996/doc/17.pdf
>> Submitted as "What's All This Then About National Parks" by Margy Bargy
>>>> Result: Original PS source found ("greywww.kub.nl"), but with
a low match level, either because only the first few pages were
submitted or because the Postscript file would contain many extraneous
printer language commands. (Also found my own notes for this workshop!) 12% match.
- A report on recombinant DNA in PostScript form (text with embedded
commands) at
www.ai.mit.edu/research/abstracts/abstracts2000/ps/z-abelson.ps
>> Submitted as "Recombining" by Joe Schmo
>>>> Result: Found 11 sources, mostly MIT sites, including the original, but not the original abstract. 67% match.
- A brief extract from a longer observation on Chaucer's Clerk's Tale, from
http://www.richardhay.com/chaucer.html
>> Submitted with slight variations in wording, and a couple of additional sentences inserted.
>>>> Result: Not found, possibly because the 50% match criterion was not met due to the brevity
of the extract relative to the original document.
EVE2 succeeded in most cases, finding obvious Internet documents along with original Postscript sources,
amateur pages on commercial servers, and the problematic overseas university
page. We advise, however, that the instructor never use its results alone as a
basis for judgment regarding any given essay. As the last test shows, mechanical matching driven by parameters can yield false negatives, and false positives can be generated by earlier versions
of the test document, or by lengthy quotation.
TEST RESULTS-- TURNITIN
(March 2002) Turnitin failed half of the tests submitted, especially for PDF and
PostScript files, commercial servers available to the public, and overseas
sources. See notes for the workshop of March
2002 for the full story. The company's claim
that the use of paper mills will be revealed remains untested, as we balked
at purchasing such a paper for test submission.
TEST RESULTS-- SEARCH ENGINES
- (March, 2002) This extract from the Jan van der Straaten PDF paper (see
above) was typed in to
the search phrase window of various search engines.
"The disadvantages of this development are increasingly being recognised
by politicians, particularly within the European Union. In recent European
documents, such as the Fifth Action Programme, it is argued that the
traditional development of the countryside should be stopped and that
a sustainable development of society should result in limitations to the
'normal' economic development of regions."
Results:
Google (Advanced, exact phrase): "404 Not Found"
Alta Vista (Advanced, exact phrase): "Found 0 results"
MSN Search for exact string cut off at "... European doc," then failed.
Excite: No exact phrase search.
Dogpile: No exact phrase search.
- (March 2002) This shorter extract, a single sentence from the van der Straaten
paper, was submitted.
"In recent European documents, such as the Fifth Action Programme, it
is argued that the traditional development of the countryside should be
stopped and that a sustainable development of society should result in
limitations to the 'normal' economic development of regions."
Results:
Google (Advanced, exact phrase): Successful; found van der Straaten paper.
Google was able to find this source because it translates PDF documents
into HTML as it inspects them.
Alta Vista (Advanced, exact phrase): "Found 0 results"
- A single sentence from the essay on Chaucer (see above) was submitted to Google.
Results:
Google immediately found the original Richard Hay piece.
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