Finding the Original Source
If you suspect plagiarism, there are a number of places you can search to find the original source. The information below is intended as a brief guide to help you with your search. If further assistance is required, contact your Liaison Librarian.
General Tips
- Choose a phrase from the suspect work that would be unlikely to appear in numerous sources
- Use quotation marks at the beginning and end of the phrase when searching
- More than one phrase may be combined to improve accuracy
- Begin by searching for the source type that is predominantly cited in the student’s bibliography e.g.: journal, book, internet resource
Journal Articles
- The library’s Electronic Resources would be one place to search
- Choose a commonly used database such as ProQuest or check the Subject Research Guides for popular databases for your department subject
- Be sure that the search is done on the full-text of the articles and not just on the citation or abstract
- Google and Google Scholar are other places to search articles in published sources
Books
- The library's eBooks are fully searchable
- Google contains millions of scanned books, the full text of which you can search for a specific phrase
Internet Resources
- Google, or another search engine, will allow you to search websites as well as many papers that can be sold to students from paper mills
Plagiarism Detection Services and Software
St. Francis Xavier University does not subscribe to any plagiarism detection services but there are a number available to aid in detecting papers that have been downloaded from the Internet. There are a few free services, but most require a fee.
Eve2: After searching the web for matches, a report is generated that indicates the percentage of the paper that is plagiarized and highlights the plagiarized sections. Eve software is loaded locally on your computer. There is a $30 US fee for Eve software.
Turnitin.com: Turnitin.com maintains a large database of papers submitted from members and papers are compared to this database as well as searching the Internet. Turnitin licensing can be for individual faculty member, for departments, or a university as a whole.
Glatt Plagiarism Services, Inc.: Offers a tutorial software program to teach students about plagiarism ($250 US), software for detecting plagiarism ($250 US) and a free self detection test online (or a $65 US Windows version).
MOSS: A system for detecting software plagiarism: "MOSS (Measure Of Software Similarity) is an automatic system for determining the similarity of C, C++, Java, Pascal, Ada, ML, Lisp, or Scheme programs." Users must obtain an account but the software is free.
JPlag: JPlag is a system that finds similarities among multiple sets of source code files. JPlag is free but users must obtain an account.
