A’level plagiarism accusation

[MACx71]

DD has been accused of plagiarism in her A’level EPQ dissertation. Reading the Turnitin Similarity Report it appears that the exam board had not used the software correctly and the items it is flagging as being similar to text in others work (none >2% similarity) appear to be very generic and quite ridiculous (eg accused of coping form a golf league website, a betting site and a Chinese blog site etc.). The exam board appears to be simply saying ‘computer says no’. School is being helpful, but it is all new to them! Any one else with similar experience, any advice welcome.

Has the work been referenced? Is the content in any way linked to the flagged items?

Work was extensively referenced. The vast majority of the 167 flagged pieces of text were unrelated to the topic, a number of flags related to; the template used by the exam board, the bibliography (which Turnitin recommend is not checked for similarity); even some of the teacher feedback was flagged!!

In which case, it shouldn't be a problem. I always end up with loads of flags in my students' NEAs because of the subject. None of them has ever been disqualified.

@MACx71 one of the departments at our school had this recently. It seems the exam boards are experimenting with their new generative-ai detection software. The allegation was unproven from the school's perspective, but they're still awaiting the verdict on the report that was sent back. In the meantime we've had to shell out £££ to upgrade our plagiarism-detection software to match the version used by the exam boards.

It makes you wonder if the exam boards were given their software for free as a neat marketing ploy.

Thanks @crankee3 , good luck with the appeal

@MACx71

I am sorry your daughter is going through this quite distressing experience,

to be honest i am Susprised this kind of misunderstanding doesn't happen more often..

Turnitin is a text matching software package, not a plagiarism detection package. This is an important distinction. You could have a high similarity of text but it could be in figures and tables, it could be quoted and referenced - and that usually would be fine. Are there are sections of unattributed, identical text, full sentences or significant sentence fragments (say more than 7/8 words in a row)? If each individual source is matched at less than 2% I usually wouldn't worry too much, but you need to go through the report carefully as even a single copied sentence (unquoted and unattributed) could be problematic. If there are then you might want to discuss with the exam board what they consider to be written plagiarism (passing off anothers words or writing as your own), and what they consider to be poor academic practice (not adequately referencing, not quite enough re-writing, but not obviously trying to cheat).

Thanks @gldd your comments are very much inline with what we understand, our concern is the exam board does not seem to looking beyond the high level similarity report despite an initial representation along these lines. It is now going to formal appeal but the school is concerned if the process will really consider this. Fingers crossed that they will

Not adequately referencing and inadequate paraphrasing are types of plagiarism.

i deal with plagiarism cases at work (university) and would consider poor academic practice see to be things like excessive use of quotes or insufficient number of references. If the student does not include citations or references or does not paraphrase correctly (rule of thumb is 50% the same but less can be considered plagiarised), they are penalises for plagiarism. Basically, you are assumed to be claiming credit for anything not attributed. Whether the student intended to cheat or not is irrelevant.

However, loads of people don’t understand Turnitin reports. As you say, it is a similarity report, not a plagiarism report. You can have a high similarity index and be fine or a low one and have plagiarised.

I would suggest going through the report and looking at each piece of highlighted text. Is it substantial chunks of relevant text? So, for example, if it’s a generic preamble that has no real relevance to the subject, you can argue your case. That said, I would hope that whoever is examining it knows what a Turnitin report is and what is actual plagiarism rather than simply some common phrases.

The exam boards now have the latest software, which is flagging matches in quantities that they can't possibly check centrally, so they are sending them to the schools to do the checks. As noted in my pp, the outcome will be that many schools buy the same software themselves (if they can afford to) so they can check students' work more routinely and train them how to paraphrase better, reference properly, etc. Hopefully by the time they get to uni they will have mastered the art!

This is the version now being aimed at secondary schools: https://www.turnitin.co.uk/products/originality/

They shouldn't be using the AI detector functionality. It is extremely unreliable. We're not allowed use it at university.

Fyi, Pearson have added a whole section on artificial intelligence to their plagiarism guide for this year: https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/Support/Quality%2520Assurance/btec-centre-guide-to-plagiarism.pdf

If they're going to use Turnitin's similarity reports for all schools it will cause a lot of controversy.

This is similar to what happened to my child. She has been accussed of plagiarism even though she has referenced all the scientific journals she used in her dissertation.

If you don't mind me asking have you had any update on the verdict as she is extremely nervous about it and similarly to you guys we are completely new to this.

Referencing sources is not sufficient. Plagiarism is not adequately crediting someone for their work so if there were citations missing or if the material from the referenced work is not adequately paraphrased, it is considered to be plagiarism. Most of the cases I deal with (university) are provide references. The problem is usually inadequate paraphrasing of the source material.

We had a mostly successful outcome. It felt we had to push the school hard (they are a very good school mostly) to submit a robust appeal that we helped write. Note our appeal was all about poor use of the Similarity report software.

good luck