Turnitin.com doesn't profit from the student's essay in the sense of
publishing it, thus depriving the student of royalties. Very few student
essays are publishable, and the complaint that someone is profiting from
their work is spurious. It could equally be argued that we as teachers
are profiting from their work, because universities couldn't function as
accrediting institutions unless students submitted essays for our
scrutiny.

Provided it is made clear at registration that essays are liable to be
checked, it is no more objectionable that they should be sent to
Turnitin.com than that airline pilots should be given breath tests to
check that they aren't drunk before flying a plane. Refusing a test is
tantamount to admission of guilt.

As for the case in question, I would say that the university is at fault
if it hadn't required the student to sign a disclaimer in advance. It's
outrageous to give essays a mark of zero simply because the student
refuses permission for them to be checked, unless permission has already
been given. Plagiarism needs to be proved, and there are other means of
detection, such as running a google search on rare combinations of
words.

George.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
George MacDonald Ross
Director
Philosophical and Religious Studies LTSN Subject Centre
School of Philosophy
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT UK
+44 (0)113-343-3283
[log in to unmask]
http://www.prs-ltsn.ac.uk


-----Original Message-----
From: Plagiarism [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeremy
Miles
Sent: 18 January 2004 10:53
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Student's rights in their own work


This has also appeared on slashdot, where there will be discussion
(probably).

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/16/2237223

JM


At 16:51 16/01/2004, John Royce wrote:
>There was some discussion of this subject, some time back.
>
>Now McGill has made a decision in the case of Jesse Rosenfeld, who
>claimed the right not to submit his work to Turnitin.com.  He argued
>that it was not right that a commercial company should make money out
of
>his work when he, the student, would receive no recompense for that
work.
>
>Headline: "McGill backs down after an undergraduate refuses to submit
>his work to a Web firm that checks for originality and then keeps
essays
>in its database."
>
>The full story is at
><http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&lid=1&sid=54546>
>
>Best,
>
>John Royce
>Library Director : Robert College of Istanbul
>
>***********************************************************************
**
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Jeremy Miles
mailto:[log in to unmask]             http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~jnvm1/
Dept of Health Sciences (Area 4),  University of York,  York,  YO10 5DD
Phone: 01904 321375       Mobile: 07941 228018         Fax 01904 321320

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