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the student from the institute or revoke the degree that has been earned in part by plagiarizing. This is the most extreme action that academic institutes take. Many times they let the students go with warnings or suspension for a short period of time. In truth however plagiarism is not just an academic offense rather it is a legal offense as stated in the law of United States.

Under the copyright law of the United States the owner of the plagiarized content has the rights to sue the plagiarizer for violating his copyright. This is not only restricted to a full cut and paste of the original work rather any attempt at reproducing the original work by rephrasing also counts as a violation of the copyright law. Basically plagiarism is a fraud and any just society is to punish the person who commits a fraud because a fraud by its nature is bound to have its negative impacts on someone else. Hence we find that very few academic institutes are actually handling the offense of plagiarism the way it ought to be.

How can plagiarism be avoided?

There are many ways in which plagiarism can be avoided. But to eradicate a disease it must be eliminated from its roots hence it is imperative for us to determine the root cause of the increase in academic plagiarism in order to avoid it. It has been noticed that inadequate schooling opportunities have been one of the leading factors for plagiarism. Getting into the very few reputable institutions is tough and people are willing to cheat their way in. By increasing the capacity of good schools and opening more reputable institutes the potential students will not feel the need to plagiarize.

University pressure coupled with peer pressure also leads the students to academic plagiarism. With the people constantly up his back to get excellent grades so that he can get a good job he feels he has to do that at any cost. It is common knowledge that the easy access of the internet has led to the increase in academic plagiarism. We cannot stop the students from using the internet but we can develop and use software that identifies any attempt at plagiarizing by the student.

What tools exist to detect plagiarism and how do they work?

The threat of academic plagiarism has been realized by the majority of institutions and much effort has been made to develop tools that will not let plagiarized work go undetected. After going through the initial process of detecting the suspicious work the staff can make use of the different kinds of tools that have been developed for the purpose. The internet is now flooded with these tools that can help detect plagiarism in different ways.

These programs will detect any similarities to other material that exists on the web. Some of these websites will charge a fee for their service whereas others are free to use. Amongst the different links is www.plagiarism.org which lets you submit your articles to check them for plagiarism at a nominal fee. Another web service by the name of www.findsame.com identifies anything copied longer than a sentence. Trial versions of the different software are available for download whereas you always have the opportunity to screen the content through the service on the internet.

Learn more about this author, Shehryar Shaukat.
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