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