Stellar structure and evolution
HT2006, 5 pts.
The Urkund anti-plagiarism system
Copied by permission, http://www.urkund.se/Dear Student
As you probably are aware, plagiarism - when students intentionally or unintentionally submit material written by others, claiming it to be their own - is an increasingly common phenomenon. Surveys show that the problem of plagiarism is widespread and has increased in recent years mainly because of the vastly improved possibilities of distributing and collecting material offered by the Internet.
The problem has several aspects:
- Cheating causes unfair relationships between cheating and non-cheating students since, at the end of the day, students' use their grades to compete for attractive jobs after completed studies.
- The prevalence of plagiarism brings with it a deteriorated level of attainment for the plagiarists, something which, if plagiarism becomes widespread, is a threat to the quality of the educational system. This is in turn a threat to the academic integrity, since it will undermine the reliability which the non-academic world ascribes the educational system.
- Copyright: It is not allowed to use the work of another person without their permission. Plagiarism therefore implies a violation of the copyright law.
Together with the Department of Education at Uppsala University in Sweden, Urkund has developed a completely automated system for handling students' works.
Shortly Urkund works as follows. As a student you submit your work via the unique e-mail address that your teacher has been assigned by Urkund. On the way to the teacher the work passes Urkund, where it's added to the Urkund database. A specifically program then compares the work with the content in the database, the content of carefully selected sources on the Internet, encyclopaedic articles, articles from journals and newspapers and books. The program can decide whether the submitted work is identical in its whole, or in part, with the compared sources. If any similarities are identified the program will notice where in the submitted work it was found, and from which sources. The result of the comparison will be sent forward to the teacher together with the submitted work.
The purpose of adding submitted works to the Urkund database is to make them available for future comparisons. In that way they will be protected from other students plagiarizing them. The works sent to Urkund will not be used in any other purpose than that mentioned above.
If you have any questions concerning Urkund, please contact your department or school.