Back to Plagiarism home Paper may be from
1) An on-line paper mill.
Many of these "mills" are scanned by the more commonly used search
engines (see below for details).
2) A web page.
Again, many of the pages are easily found using Google, Northern Lights, Excite
or Altavista.
3) A stash of term papers.
Urban legend has it that many student organizations and other associations keep collections. Old
citations, bad citations, broken web links are all clues that the paper is not
"fresh."
4) A relative or loved one.
Look for citations to reference materials unavailable at ABAC -- or even in Georgia.
The librarians can show you how to find which libraries own what books.
Searching the web.
Go to www.google.com
Pick "Advanced Search"
In the search box "Find results with the EXACT phrase" type a phrase from the paper that you see as unique, oddly worded, using a highly technical term or has some other character to it that gives you pause.
No luck with Google? Try Altavista
www.altavista.com
To search phrases , type them within quotes -- "elongated strands of
epithelial cells are often precursors" -- and see what comes up.
Google and Altavista are the two biggest engines, but there are many others. You could try
Dogpile
Dogpile is a meta-engine, which means it searches the databases of other
search engines rather than compiling its own database of websites. Since
each of the databases Dogpile uses has its own idiosyncrasies, the results from
a Dogpile search can be "interesting".