Guide to Detecting and Eliminating Plagiarism

• BEFORE making the assignment, try searching for a paper topic that you think would be appropriate for your students and see how easy it is to locate a paper. Go to Google and type in free term papers.
• AFTER the paper is submitted, look for similar papers on a paper database site. Try EssayFinder (http://www.essayfinder.com) and search by subject or title. Compare the description of the paper, including length and number of citations. ALSO TRY:
  http://www.termpapers-on-file.com/
  http://www.realpapers.com/
  http://www.papersheaven.com/
  http://www.term-papers-4u.com/
  http://www.geniuspapers.com/
• Use the Google-Plus-Four method. Find a four-word phrase that appears to be unique in your “suspect” paper. Take the phrase to Google and perform an exact phrase search by typing the phrase into the search window in quotation marks. Try other metasearch engines like Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com).

Software programs and electronic web services for detecting plagiarism

Turnitin (Now used at WFU.)
http://www.wfu.edu/~boydmbet/Turnitin06.html

UVA’s Wcopyfind can compare two or more local documents for similarities. Free software download
http://plagiarism.phys.virginia.edu/Wsoftware.html

Others include: Findsome, Eve2, CopyCatch, Word Check