Online essays 'sold many times'

Internet essays prove poor buys

University students who buy essays from online auction sites and try to pass them off as their own are likely to be found out, a researcher has claimed.

University of Glamorgan computer expert Mike Reddy tracked a single essay on e-Bay.

He found "one-off" research could be sold many times, with interest in trading it involving up to 300 people.

NUS Wales said plagiarism was totally unacceptable but that many students faced "understandable" pressures.

Dr Reddy's research was sparked after a colleague at the Pontypridd campus saw an essay on mechanical engineering for sale on e-Bay that was not marked for "research only," suggesting it could have been submitted as a student's own work.

It's very clear that there were people selling essays on e-Bay who were trying to help people to plagiarise - that was their intent. Dr Mike Reddy

Dr Reddy, a senior lecturer at the university's school of computing, used e-Bay's user profiles to track everyone who bid for that document.

He expanded the search to include what other educational material they bid for and what the sellers of that material also had for sale.

He said he found a network of online sales aimed at bypassing examiners and universities' detection software with plagiarised material.

"We found a lot of the same people selling or buying the same type of thing," he said.

Fake research

"People who bought mechanical engineering essays generally bought items on other related topics.

"It's very clear that there were people selling essays on e-Bay who were trying to help people to plagiarise. That was their intent."

Dr Reddy is a member of the JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service's experts' group. The service provides software which compares work submitted by students to find suspicious similarities.

He said some of the sellers he contacted anonymously offered tips on how to slip their fake research past lecturers and detection software.

"They said things like 'hand it to them a bit at a time' and 'put in a few spelling mistakes'," he said.

Dr Reddy tracked an essay on an internet auction site

His conclusion was that students who thought they were safe in buying so-called one-off material from online auction sites were still running a high risk of discovery.

"We have got records of essays being sold multiple times," he added.

"If they have been sold multiple times then they are just as prone to being picked up by the detection software as anything else."

Another concern was the increase in sales of scripts for coursework presentations, he said.

"Presentations are very rarely handed in - you see it, mark it and go away. With no electronic copy, you are less likely to find that someone had bought them."

NUS Cymru President, James Knight, said: "Plagiarism is totally unacceptable but in some cases understandable.

"What really needs to be done is to see that, aside from funding students properly, there is a need to make sure all assessments are far more flexible in their nature, so they can be tailored more to individual students."

The internet auction site e-Bay was asked to comment on Dr Reddy's research but has not responded as yet.