User:AKoval (WMF)/Plagiarism

This page is draft collection of resources and information on the topic of plagiarism as it pertains to the Wikimedia movement, in general, and the Wikipedia Education Program, in particular. Please feel free to contribute to it.

The following information on copyright and plagiarism is provided as an overview to help professors and students comply with Wikipedia's policies. It is not intended to provide or imply legal advice. If you have questions or concerns regarding copyright issues, please consult a licensed attorney in your area.

“	Copyright and plagiarism policies apply to everything on Wikipedia—including sandboxes.	”
—Wikipedia Ambassador Training

Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects have clear policies and guidelines against copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Copying and pasting content from source materials may violate copyright laws as well as Wikipedia's copyright rules. This includes material from websites of charity or non-profit organizations, educational, scholarly, and news publications, and all sources without a copyright notice. If a work does not include a copyright notice, assume it to be under copyright protection.

Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. Use of copyrighted text must comply with fair use requirements and non-free content criteria policies.

As a general rule, do not copy and paste text from other sources. Doing so usually constitutes both a copyright violation and plagiarism. Instead, properly paraphrase and cite sources.

Copyright

Plagiarism tutorial video

Plagiarism

Detection

Turnitin is a third-party, internet-based, plagiarism-detection service. A potential collaboration with them was discussed here:

Wikipedia:Turnitin

Various tools from Wikimedia Tool Labs support copyvio detection.

Bots patrol newly-created pages in the main space, and match the contents against a web search. Pages found to contain a significant portion of text taken from another web page are tagged and categorized for human attention according to project guidelines.

Investigation

Communities list and discuss possible copyright problems involving text on Wikipedia, including pages which are suspected to be copyright violations. Then, administrators, copyright clerks or other experienced editors review cases and take further action as necessary.

Research

In late 2013, we conducted a quantitative review of plagiarism on English Wikipedia and how widespread it is among student editors participating in the Wikipedia Education Program in the U.S. and Canada when compared with other new editors. The study provides baseline data on the general prevalence of plagiarism of on English Wikipedia. The results suggest that student editors in the Wikipedia Education Program in the U.S. and Canada plagiarized at a lower rate than what is typical for other newcomers who start or expand articles.

Meta:Research:Plagiarism on the English Wikipedia
Outreach:Education Newsletter: Plagiarism study results released
Wikimedia Blog: How to make a Wikipedian angry
WMF Metrics & Activities Meeting (plagiarism study presented at 44:14)
Wikipedia Weekly Podcast on YouTube (plagiarism study is discussed at 11:30)