Internet Watchdog Could Stop Collegiate Copycats
Academic thieves beware. While the Internet has placed a wealth of research papers at the fingertips of students, a new Web site could help professors catch plagiarizers red-handed.
Some students actually research and write their term-papers the old-fashioned way. Others, however, just copy fake ones off the Internet and turn them in as their work.
To prevent collegiate copycats, two graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley have devised a program that compares a student's submission with every other term- paper on the Web.