National Plagiarism Service Proves Success

A government-funded project established 10 years ago to identify and prevent plagiarism in students' assessed work has proved a success.

A nationwide rollout of Turnitin plagiarism detection software coupled with best practice guidance has led to a 59% reduction in unoriginal essay content.

In 2002, growing concern about the 'cut and paste' culture in academia prompted Jisc, the UK expert on digital technologies in education and research, to fund a project to establish the Plagiarism Advisory Service.

The service's aim was to establish a national strategy to allow UK higher and further education institutions to check the authenticity of student work.

Universities and colleges were given free access to Turnitin plagiarism detection software for an initial three years.

In 2005, 7.7% of work submitted to the system was flagged as having more than three quarters of unoriginal – or potentially plagiarised - content. By 2012, that figure had fallen to 3.1%.

Work with a 'similarity rate' of more than 50% fell from 10.5% in 2005 to 6.6% in 2012.

Will Murray, Vice President of Turnitin International, said: “Student surveys and evidence from the US identified there were issues arising out of the increased availability of material on the internet which needed to be addressed with a nationwide strategy.

"Turnitin has always emphasised the need for an integrated strategy where technology is combined with advice and guidance, but there is no doubt that the use of Turnitin has acted as the most significant catalyst for change within institutions."

"Alongside the software, we have created a global community of academics and user groups to ensure that we draw on expertise and best practice from across the world."

"As a result the problem appears to be much more in control and there has been an overall reduction in unoriginal content."

Now, Turnitin is used in 98% of UK higher education institutions. The use of originality reports has increased almost fifty-fold since 2005, with in excess of five million produced in 2012.

Dr Mike Reddy, one of a number of academics to form the original advisory board, said: “It was important to adopt a holistic approach where the advisory role and the introduction of detection software would complement each other.

"This strategy, including five internationally recognised conferences, has had a significant impact in terms of changing attitudes in UK and global approaches to handling plagiarism."

Turnitin sponsors the PlagiarismAdvice.org service, which became financially independent of Jisc in 2007 and provides resources, advice and training to the education sector as well as organising the international Plagiarism Conference.

For further information please contact Caroline Smith, Communications and PR Officer on (0044) (0)845 643 0105 or email intmedia@turnitin.com