5 ms·

Why I won't TurnItIn

9 points by boredguy8 16y ago

SHOwnsYou 16y ago
I had no idea TurnItIn checked submitted papers against previously submitted papers. Today begins my quest to get all of my papers removed from TurnItIn.com's database.
- boredguy8 16y ago
  I'm curious how that works out for you.
- tariq 16y ago
  doesn't look too promising. let us know if you are successful. "Requests to remove papers from the [student paper] database must be submitted to the Turnitin help desk by the institution's Turnitin account administrator."
1va 16y ago
I'm not a big fan of this business but I take issue with the "Teachable Moment" image seemingly created for this post. How does what TurnItIn is doing constitute an "IP Rights" violation? Surely in the contract that the school signed they gave TurnItIn permission to use these data in this way, and asserted that the teacher, by uploading the document, is ensuring that he or she has the right to grant that permission. At the very least this pushes the IP issues onto the school, as far as TurnItIn knows they have every right to use this content in that way. It seems probable that the admissions paperwork for the school probably granted the school the right to make limited use of the work the student turns in. I know when I had to complete a "Bachelor Thesis" the school retained the right to use that content, at least for publication and probably for sale if they chose to. Is that uncommon? Also, I think the problem TurnItIn is trying to solve is less about copyright violation and more about plagiarism/intellectual dishonesty in an academic context. You could readily buy a paper or essay from someone to obtain the copyright permissions, but if you submit that as your own work to the professor you've violated academic ethics.
- SHOwnsYou 16y ago
  Pretty sure it is vastly uncommon for schools to retain publishing rights to your papers. My university has publishing rights (which they purchased) to a single paper of mine to publish in a journal.
  - enjo 16y ago
    Not in my experience. I'm quite sure my wifes PhD thesis belongs, for all intents and purposes, to her granting University. I believe that is standard at least at the Doctoral level. By the same token my honors college undergrad thesis also granted publishing rights to my University (which is comical given the quality).
    - Zev 16y ago
      A thesis is quite different from a random two page paper on a few chapters reading from last week.
  - 1va 16y ago
    "The right to make limited use of the work" is different from publishing rights. This technology wasn't in common use when I went to school, but it seems really easy for the school to slip in something granting them the right to upload this to TurnMeIn into one agreement you sign or another. For that matter, it's not entirely clear to me what the copyright issues are around work you do for your university. I mean you're already handing it over to the Professor with the exception that he'll do some things with it. Can he hand it out to future classes as an example of the kind of thing he's looking for? (This seems common.) Can he bundle it with other papers and use it as a textbook in future classes? (This seems uncommon.) I do think it is common for schools to at least co-own the publishing rights to a Doctoral thesis. (And in fairness, if your advisers are doing a good job, they may have a legitimate claim to that.) It certainly seems like in the sciences graduate students are frequently complaining about professors taking undue credit for the student's research. Is a paper different than that? How much of your work for a university falls under some sort limited "work-for-hire" style agreement?
Zev 16y ago
My college has used TurnItIn for (at least) a few years now. At least, some departments do. I've only had to take one class that used it, Introduction to Psychology. I went and spoke to the professor about this, asking if I could email her the paper, rather than using this service. She said that if it was up to her, I could but it wasn't and I would have to talk to the head of the department. I went and spoke to the head of the department and she accused me of wanting to cheat, due to my objections to the policy. I pointed out that I objected to the service keeping the rights to my paper to use for checking against anyone else's paper. She all but said that she didn't care and that my choices were to use the service or to fail the class -- it was too late in the semester to drop the class without approval from the dean. I ended up using the service, I was a freshman and didn't want to fail the class. Especially not so late in the semester. At the top of each paper was a notice saying that the work was copyrighted to myself and that I didn't give TurnItIn permission to use it. I doubt the service noticed, it is automated, after all. I've since made a point to ask every professor in a class where I would have to write a paper if the department uses such a service. They've all said basically the same thing: "We don't use that service, don't worry," and one even mentioned the concerns I had as a reason why they didn't want to use it either.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  What is your concern with TurnItIn using your paper? Is it just some arbitrary thing you have against the service or were you caught cheating with it in the past or something else? Just seems random to me.
  - Zev 16y ago
    Just to get this out of the way: I would rather fail a class than cheat. We don't know each other, so you might not believe me. But, thats my personal belief. This dislike isn't arbitrary. My problem is that I wrote the paper. I don't want a third party to be able to use it to their own monetary gain without my permission. Being forced to do so left a bad taste in my mouth. When I tried to get in touch with TurnItIn to express my concerns, I didn't receive any response. I can see the counterargument in your head already -- "But you use Google, don't you? How about Amazon and hundreds of other services that keep information about you." To which, I respond that I'm not signed into Google (prefer Bing or Duck Duck Go, at that) do not use Facebook and find Amazon's recommendations useful enough that it doesn't bother me. And I chose to use the rest of the services. These companies also make their privacy policy and what they do with the information clear. With TurnItIn, the privacy issue wasn't clear when I looked. Would they ever sell the database? If they did, would they make a reasonable effort to protect my information? I was turning in a paper with my name and email address on it, after all. Tied directly to my college information, at that.
hardy263 16y ago
My university computer programming class is using this to check source code for assignments. What irked me is that there's entire buildings full of computer scientists and engineers, but they can't develop their own plagiarism detection algorithm for internal use, and thereby safeguarding the works of their students. It just doesn't make sense to me.

9 points by boredguy8 16y ago

I had no idea TurnItIn checked submitted papers against previously submitted papers. Today begins my quest to get all of my papers removed from TurnItIn.com's database.

boredguy8 16y ago
I'm curious how that works out for you.
tariq 16y ago
doesn't look too promising. let us know if you are successful. "Requests to remove papers from the [student paper] database must be submitted to the Turnitin help desk by the institution's Turnitin account administrator."

1va 16y ago

I'm not a big fan of this business but I take issue with the "Teachable Moment" image seemingly created for this post. How does what TurnItIn is doing constitute an "IP Rights" violation? Surely in the contract that the school signed they gave TurnItIn permission to use these data in this way, and asserted that the teacher, by uploading the document, is ensuring that he or she has the right to grant that permission. At the very least this pushes the IP issues onto the school, as far as TurnItIn knows they have every right to use this content in that way. It seems probable that the admissions paperwork for the school probably granted the school the right to make limited use of the work the student turns in. I know when I had to complete a "Bachelor Thesis" the school retained the right to use that content, at least for publication and probably for sale if they chose to. Is that uncommon? Also, I think the problem TurnItIn is trying to solve is less about copyright violation and more about plagiarism/intellectual dishonesty in an academic context. You could readily buy a paper or essay from someone to obtain the copyright permissions, but if you submit that as your own work to the professor you've violated academic ethics.

SHOwnsYou 16y ago
Pretty sure it is vastly uncommon for schools to retain publishing rights to your papers. My university has publishing rights (which they purchased) to a single paper of mine to publish in a journal.
- enjo 16y ago
  Not in my experience. I'm quite sure my wifes PhD thesis belongs, for all intents and purposes, to her granting University. I believe that is standard at least at the Doctoral level. By the same token my honors college undergrad thesis also granted publishing rights to my University (which is comical given the quality).
  - Zev 16y ago
    A thesis is quite different from a random two page paper on a few chapters reading from last week.
- 1va 16y ago
  "The right to make limited use of the work" is different from publishing rights. This technology wasn't in common use when I went to school, but it seems really easy for the school to slip in something granting them the right to upload this to TurnMeIn into one agreement you sign or another. For that matter, it's not entirely clear to me what the copyright issues are around work you do for your university. I mean you're already handing it over to the Professor with the exception that he'll do some things with it. Can he hand it out to future classes as an example of the kind of thing he's looking for? (This seems common.) Can he bundle it with other papers and use it as a textbook in future classes? (This seems uncommon.) I do think it is common for schools to at least co-own the publishing rights to a Doctoral thesis. (And in fairness, if your advisers are doing a good job, they may have a legitimate claim to that.) It certainly seems like in the sciences graduate students are frequently complaining about professors taking undue credit for the student's research. Is a paper different than that? How much of your work for a university falls under some sort limited "work-for-hire" style agreement?

Zev 16y ago

My college has used TurnItIn for (at least) a few years now. At least, some departments do. I've only had to take one class that used it, Introduction to Psychology. I went and spoke to the professor about this, asking if I could email her the paper, rather than using this service. She said that if it was up to her, I could but it wasn't and I would have to talk to the head of the department. I went and spoke to the head of the department and she accused me of wanting to cheat, due to my objections to the policy. I pointed out that I objected to the service keeping the rights to my paper to use for checking against anyone else's paper. She all but said that she didn't care and that my choices were to use the service or to fail the class -- it was too late in the semester to drop the class without approval from the dean. I ended up using the service, I was a freshman and didn't want to fail the class. Especially not so late in the semester. At the top of each paper was a notice saying that the work was copyrighted to myself and that I didn't give TurnItIn permission to use it. I doubt the service noticed, it is automated, after all. I've since made a point to ask every professor in a class where I would have to write a paper if the department uses such a service. They've all said basically the same thing: "We don't use that service, don't worry," and one even mentioned the concerns I had as a reason why they didn't want to use it either.

kenjackson 16y ago
What is your concern with TurnItIn using your paper? Is it just some arbitrary thing you have against the service or were you caught cheating with it in the past or something else? Just seems random to me.
- Zev 16y ago
  Just to get this out of the way: I would rather fail a class than cheat. We don't know each other, so you might not believe me. But, thats my personal belief. This dislike isn't arbitrary. My problem is that I wrote the paper. I don't want a third party to be able to use it to their own monetary gain without my permission. Being forced to do so left a bad taste in my mouth. When I tried to get in touch with TurnItIn to express my concerns, I didn't receive any response. I can see the counterargument in your head already -- "But you use Google, don't you? How about Amazon and hundreds of other services that keep information about you." To which, I respond that I'm not signed into Google (prefer Bing or Duck Duck Go, at that) do not use Facebook and find Amazon's recommendations useful enough that it doesn't bother me. And I chose to use the rest of the services. These companies also make their privacy policy and what they do with the information clear. With TurnItIn, the privacy issue wasn't clear when I looked. Would they ever sell the database? If they did, would they make a reasonable effort to protect my information? I was turning in a paper with my name and email address on it, after all. Tied directly to my college information, at that.

hardy263 16y ago

My university computer programming class is using this to check source code for assignments. What irked me is that there's entire buildings full of computer scientists and engineers, but they can't develop their own plagiarism detection algorithm for internal use, and thereby safeguarding the works of their students. It just doesn't make sense to me.