Online Term Papers
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Study Guide

What are Online Term Paper Mills?

Online term paper “mills” which sell finished research essays to students are surprisingly rampant. According to turnitin.org, the leading site in automatic plagiarism detection, 29% of students' essays contain "significant plagiarism" and 1% are fully plagiarized. The Kimbel Library at Coastal Carolina University lists over 250 online sites which sell or give away copies of research papers on all subjects. Owners of these websites report daily emails from students profusely thanking them for their "help." Of course cheating and plagiarism have always been problems in academic environments, but with the internet, it is so incredibly easy to simply grab a paper online when the due dates mount up.

Defining Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as copying someone else's words or ideas without giving them due credit. With the use of online term papers on the rise, it is imperative that teachers educate themselves and their students on what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it. For a good start, go here.

Why Students Plagiarize.

Most of us would agree that plagiarizing violates some basic rules of ethics, and furthermore, nobody would dispute the claim that handing in a paper downloaded from the internet (or copying significant portions of it) constitutes plagiarism. So how do students justify these actions to themselves? Well, many claim that the academic environment places an unreasonable emphasis on both "formal" assessment through writing that is somewhat artificial and not relevant outside academia. They also claim that our society as a whole relies too heavily on GPA and grades in determining one's potential, and many students, faced with a deadline that they feel they cannot meet, see no other way to get the grade without doing some cheating "here and there." For an essay defending these sites, go here.

Ethical Issues

But there are problems with the students' arguments. Writing research papers, while perhaps an activity restricted to academia, develops other skills which are highly important in one's work and social life. These include the ability to locate background material and educate oneself on a subject, explaining that subject to others, analyzing evidence and forulating opinions, and supporting one's conclusions through a well-articulated argument. All of these skills trickle down into the most important aspects of life--not just building a successful career, but also being a more informed citizen, evaluating legal situations, being a better parent, and living a happier, more fulfilling life. Not only that, there is the basic ethical issue that you are using someone else's work and fooling people into believing it is your own. If we allow this kind of deliberate deception to be acceptable, why would it stop at graduation? The academic environment, even more than educating, is supposed to enstill lifelong values of honesty, discipline, and critical thinking--all of which get compromised when a student plagiarizes. Maybe the consequences in academia are minor in the "grand scheme," but in the real world they are not.

Current Safeguards

A McCabe study discussed in the N&O article "Is cheating becoming a way of life?" found that colleges and universities which have an honor code have fewer incidents of cheating. The Seattle Times article "Internet access opens door to paper plagiarism" states that some colleges and universities may practice other safeguards such as monitoring a student's work and progress over the semester for any wide leaps in quality of work. But does this make a student a cheating suspect simply if he/she begins to take the course more seriously? Some instructors, if they suspect plagiarism, may check a student's work against online sources (Google and similar search engines are quite effective here). But, this can be a time consuming process. The most promising form of safeguard is the kind provided by companies such as turnitin.org, who monitor "billions of pages" of works found on the internet, on online term paper sites, and within papers that have been submitted by other students and faculty.