Establishing a Systematic Six-Stage Process for Detecting Contract Cheating

Clarke, Robert B.; Lancaster, Thomas

doi:10.1109/icpca.2007.4365466

Cited by 47 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…A large proportion of these were by Clarke and Lancaster. This was expected as these authors have presented pioneer work in this subject since 2006 and have since published several manuscripts (Clarke and Lancaster 2007. Simply changing the search term into 'ghost writing' , but maintaining the exact search criteria retrieved 160 …”

Section: Online Searchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A close encounter with ghost-writers: an initial exploration study on background, strategies and attitudes of independent essay providers

2016

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Academic dishonesty presents in different forms, including fabrication of data, falsifying references, multiple submissions, collusion, and sabotage, with two forms haunting academia, namely plagiarism and contract cheating or ghost writing. These latter forms have received considerable attention and have been subjects for research. This interview-based study provides some further insight into the problem of ghost writing through presenting the attitudes, justifications and networking practices of some hired 'ghost-writers' from a developing country and discusses the depth of this emerging threat to the academic community. Initially, through simple internet searches using specific keywords, an array of professional advertisements selling contract writing services were identified. Some of these promotional advertisements were found in Facebook® posts, and/or Twitter® feeds. The second part of this study presents a summary of findings from interviews of a group of ghost-writers including their background, attitude and justifications for setting up this new business. The study identifies several high calibre post-graduates who have come to understand the Western (European/North American/Australian) ways of scientific writing and have produced a network of 'consultancy' services. Although the birth of their business was ad-hoc, they have established a good network and are now able to share projects and practices. Many of them offer services to home and foreign students with varied levels of customer focus. Some of them are even using Turnitin © software to identify text matching issues. This study suggests that these paper mills have widely been subscribed to by students. The article finally discusses wider issues arising from these interviews and proposes some ways of tackling this new threat to academia.

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Section: Online Searchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A close encounter with ghost-writers: an initial exploration study on background, strategies and attitudes of independent essay providers

2016

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“…Contract cheating has been observed to be a related problem to plagiarism, with links evident to the detection methods needed [1,2,19,20]. Here, students may use of a third party to have academic work completed to order for them.…”

Section: The Existing Research Base On Plagiarism and Contract Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A six-stage model has been proposed, where work placed on known agency sites is scraped and then analysed to see if it represents contract cheating [19]. It has been suggested that wider contextual information may improve such an intelligent and automated process [28].…”

Section: The Existing Research Base On Plagiarism and Contract Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An Observational Analysis of the Range and Extent of Contract Cheating from Online Courses Found on Agency Websites

Lancaster

Clarke

2014

2014 Eighth International Conference on Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems

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-Although online courses can provide access to higher education through e-learning systems which would not otherwise be available for students, they also pose challenges for academic integrity. Paramount to this is contract cheating, where students have been observed paying other people to complete work for them to complete their online courses. This paper analyses attempts by students at contract cheating using Transtutors.com, which is a billed as a site for homework support. A sample of 174 online assignments found on Transtutors.com are analysed and traced back to 17 online universities. Assignments from online institutions are demonstrated to be a particular problem for contract cheating detectives, since notifying staff at those institutions of attempts by their students to cheat has proved to be difficult or impossible. The paper concludes by looking at the wider issues posed by online contract cheating and the opportunities for automated detection within this field.

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“…To date the bulk of it has been undertaken by Clarke and Lancaster who have focussed their attention on the use of legitimate freelancing and auction sites for the purposes of contract cheating (see Clarke & Lancaster, 2006, 2007, 2013Lancaster & Clarke, 2014a, 2014b. Wallace and Newtown have also investigated the speed of production of contract cheating procured and produced through these types of site (Wallace and Newton 2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

The infernal business of contract cheating: understanding the business processes and models of academic custom writing sites

2018

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While there is growing awareness of the existence and activities of Academic Custom Writing websites, which form a small part of the contract cheating industry, how they work remains poorly understood. Very little research has been done on these sites, probably because it has been assumed that it is impossible to see behind their firewalls and password protection. We have found that, with some close scrutiny, it is indeed possible to find some 'cracks' in these sites through which we can look to gain insights into the business processes that operate within them. We have reverse engineered the business processes that operate within some of these sites. From this we have also been able to identify three different business models that are supported by these sites. Our analysis supports important findings about how these sites operate that can be used to inform future strategies to detect and deter contract cheating.

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Establishing a Systematic Six-Stage Process for Detecting Contract Cheating

Cited by 47 publications

References 6 publications

A close encounter with ghost-writers: an initial exploration study on background, strategies and attitudes of independent essay providers

A close encounter with ghost-writers: an initial exploration study on background, strategies and attitudes of independent essay providers

An Observational Analysis of the Range and Extent of Contract Cheating from Online Courses Found on Agency Websites

The infernal business of contract cheating: understanding the business processes and models of academic custom writing sites

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