Scouring the Ohio University library's archive for plagiarism, former graduate student Tom Matrka used the library's Web site to search for the keyword multiphase flow in theses and dissertations. He requested the search results from the annex and, after comparing the documents side by side, Matrka found 15 allegedly plagiarized theses.
Now the university will use a similar technique to mine a sample of more than 1,800 theses and dissertations.
A computer-aided sampling process, which is being developed by a professor in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology, is expected to determine the extent of plagiarism in a school that has endured more than 34 incidents of alleged plagiarism by former graduate students in the past year.
The Research Integrity Committee will sample between 32 and 50 theses and dissertations and compare those to a library of documents on related subjects, taking into account the thesis adviser and the dates the documents were published, engineering professor David Koonce said.
Koonce, who developed the procedure, said for each document we will identify one or more documents that the student had the potential to plagiarize from.
It's an automated way of doing something (Matrka) did
said Dennis Irwin, dean of the College of Engineering and Technology.
Irwin said that this was the best option short of an exhaustive search.
An exhaustive search, however, is still a possibility, pending the results of the sample data. If the data show more than a predetermined amount of plagiarism, then a full search of all theses and dissertations might be performed, Irwin said.
Koonce, who speculated the initial sampling will be completed by the end of the academic year, said he has not determined what an acceptable number of suspected incidences of plagiarism will be and is consulting studies of graduate students to determine a number.
We're going to look very carefully about what we could expect based on national research Irwin said.
Matrka countered, however, that short of an exhaustive search, students are being cheated.
If they put all (theses) on the same shelf ' they don't need a program or anything Matrka said. A group of us can go sit there and do it ourselves.
Aside from the sample study, the Research Integrity Committee is investigating 133 theses, including all 107 theses approved by professors Jay Gunasekera and Bhavin Mehta, along with 15 chemical engineering theses. Gunasekera and Mehta are suing the university for defamation related to the disclosure of the plagiarism cases.
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Sean Gaffney
