On plagiarism

On plagiarism

The Jakarta Post, Feb. 17's letter on plagiarism has opened a
Pandora's box. How can The Jakarta Post prevent this widespread
phenomenon?

Universities are also having to cope with this enormous task
of detecting such dishonesty in education. A method of
computerized finger-printing has been invented and can be
obtained on the web: http://plagiarism.org/ from U.C. Berkeley.

They provide a service to detect originality of wordings and
ideas compared to over 800 million publications on accessible
Internet pages. It also reports that the quality of students'
work increases when they know that manuscripts will be checked
for originality. Furthermore, it states that "unchecked cheating
and plagiarism by others undermine their (the students) own
efforts and educational enthusiasm".

PROF IWAN DARMANSJAH

Medical Faculty

University of Indonesia