Source-code plagiarism : an academic perspective

In computing courses, students are often required to complete tutorial and laboratory exercises asking them to produce source-code. Academics may require students to submit source-code produced as part of such exercises in order to monitor their students’ understanding of the material taught on that module, and submitted source-code may be checked for similarities in order to identify instances of plagiarism. In exercises that require students to work individually, source-code plagiarism can occur between students or students may plagiarise by copying material from a book or from other sources. We have conducted a survey of UK academics who teach programming on computing courses, in order to establish what is understood to constitute source-code plagiarism in an undergraduate context. In this report, we analyse the responses received from 59 academics. This report presents a detailed description of what can constitute source-code plagiarism from the perspective of academics who teach programming on computing courses, based on the responses to the survey

Source-code plagiarism : a UK academic perspective

In computing courses, students are often required to complete tutorial and laboratory exercises asking them to produce source-code. Academics may require students to submit source-code produced as part of such exercises in order to monitor their students' understanding of the material taught on that module, and submitted source-code may be checked for similarities in order to identify instances of plagiarism. In exercises that require students to work individually, source-code plagiarism can occur between students or students may plagiarise by copying material from a book or from other sources. We have conducted a survey of UK academics who teach programming on computing courses, in order to establish what is understood to constitute source-code plagiarism in an undergraduate context. In this report, we analyse the responses received from 59 academics. This report presents a detailed description of what can constitute source-code plagiarism from the perspective of academics who teach programming on computing courses, based on the responses to the survey

Performance Evaluation of Plagiarism Detection Method Based on the Intermediate Language

This paper presents detection method for source code plagiarism that is based on the intermediate language, and shows its usage in e-learning. Method is tested on the appropriate number of test cases that represent the most frequent code modification techniques. Results and its performance are compared to the existing source code plagiarism detection methods implemented in some of the most known plagiarism detection systems and applications

Structural analysis of source code plagiarism using graphs

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. May 2017Plagiarism is a serious problem in academia. It is prevalent in the computing discipline where students are expected to submit source code assignments as part of their assessment; hence, there is every likelihood of copying. Ideally, students can collaborate with each other to perform a programming task, but it is expected that each student submit his/her own solution for the programming task. More so, one might conclude that the interaction would make them learn programming. Unfortunately, that may not always be the case. In undergraduate courses, especially in the computer sciences, if a given class is large, it would be unfeasible for an instructor to manually check each and every assignment for probable plagiarism. Even if the class size were smaller, it is still impractical to inspect every assignment for likely plagiarism because some potentially plagiarised content could still be missed by humans. Therefore, automatically checking the source code programs for likely plagiarism is essential. There have been many proposed methods that attempt to detect source code plagiarism in undergraduate source code assignments but, an ideal system should be able to differentiate actual cases of plagiarism from coincidental similarities that usually occur in source code plagiarism. Some of the existing source code plagiarism detection systems are either not scalable, or performed better when programs are modified with a number of insertions and deletions to obfuscate plagiarism. To address this issue, a graph-based model which considers structural similarities of programs is introduced to address cases of plagiarism in programming assignments. This research study proposes an approach to measuring cases of similarities in programming assignments using an existing plagiarism detection system to find similarities in programs, and a graph-based model to annotate the programs. We describe experiments with data sets of undergraduate Java programs to inspect the programs for plagiarism and evaluate the graph-model with good precision. An evaluation of the graph-based model reveals a high rate of plagiarism in the programs and resilience to many obfuscation techniques, while false detection (coincident similarity) rarely occurred. If this detection method is adopted into use, it will aid an instructor to carry out the detection process conscientiously.MT 201

An Abstract Method Linearization for Detecting Source Code Plagiarism in Object-Oriented Environment

Despite the fact that plagiarizing source code is a trivial task for most CS students, detecting such unethical behavior requires a considerable amount of effort. Thus, several plagiarism detection systems were developed to handle such issue. This paper extends Karnalim's work, a low-level approach for detecting Java source code plagiarism, by incorporating abstract method linearization. Such extension is incorporated to enhance the accuracy of low-level approach in term of detecting plagiarism in object-oriented environment. According to our evaluation, which was conducted based on 23 design-pattern source code pairs, our extended low-level approach is more effective than state-of-the-art and Karnalim's approach. On the one hand, when compared to state-of-the-art approach, our approach can generate less coincidental similarities and provide more accurate result. On the other hand, when compared to Karnalim's approach, our approach, at some extent, can generate higher similarity when simple abstract method invocation is incorporated.Comment: The 8th International Conference on Software Engineering and Service Scienc

Dynamic Thresholding Mechanisms for IR-Based Filtering in Efficient Source Code Plagiarism Detection

To solve time inefficiency issue, only potential pairs are compared in string-matching-based source code plagiarism detection; wherein potentiality is defined through a fast-yet-order-insensitive similarity measurement (adapted from Information Retrieval) and only pairs which similarity degrees are higher or equal to a particular threshold is selected. Defining such threshold is not a trivial task considering the threshold should lead to high efficiency improvement and low effectiveness reduction (if it is unavoidable). This paper proposes two thresholding mechanisms---namely range-based and pair-count-based mechanism---that dynamically tune the threshold based on the distribution of resulted similarity degrees. According to our evaluation, both mechanisms are more practical to be used than manual threshold assignment since they are more proportional to efficiency improvement and effectiveness reduction.Comment: The 2018 International Conference on Advanced Computer Science and Information Systems (ICACSIS

Detection of source code plagiarism

Cílem práce je seznámit se s problematikou plagiátorství zdrojových kódů a navrhnout postupy, které budou využity při tvorbě vlastního detektoru plagiátů. Teoretická část uvádí definice a nejčastější způsoby plagiátorství, jak obecně, tak ve zdrojových kódech. Dále představuje již existující typy detektorů a uvádí principy, na kterých lze detekci provádět. Praktická část se zabývá realizací detektoru a jeho testováním.The purpose of this thesis is to introduce the matters of plagiarism of source codes and to suggest methods, that will be used to create the original plagiarism detector. Theoretical part of the thesis states the definitions and the most common methods of plagiarism, both in general and in source codes. Furthermore it presents already existing types of the detectors and states principals, according to which the detection can be performed. Practical part deals with implementation of detecton and it´s testing.