Always be "slaughtered" before graduation?

Paper check into the industry chain of misappropriation

  Colleges and Universities: You don't have to worry too much about repetition rate when writing according to academic standards

  Every May and June, most college students are faced with the "top priority" of completing their graduation thesis, and the detection of the repetition rate of the thesis ("duplication check") has become one of the focus topics.

A reporter from the Yangcheng Evening News found that many businesses sensed business opportunities in "thesis anxiety", and "wrapped money" under the banner of "checking the weight must pass", "professional weight reduction", and even advertised "100% package," Propaganda slogans such as “Fake one loses three” and “exactly the same as the school weight check” are used to “harvest” graduates’ wallets.

  What are the possible pitfalls and tricks of online duplicate checking services?

Are the merchants in the name of "HowNet" real or fake?

The reporter conducted an interview and investigation.

 hot market

  The monthly turnover of the business may reach millions of yuan

  According to the requirements, college students must upload the dissertation to the duplication checking system for duplication checking before defending their graduation thesis.

The reporter combed and found that the repetition rate of most college papers is required to be within 10%-30%, and papers of different educational levels must meet different standards.

For example, the repetition rate of undergraduate dissertations should not exceed 30%, master dissertations less than 20%, and doctoral dissertations less than 10%; some universities require all dissertations to meet the same standard, such as 10%.

  At present, most colleges and universities use CNKI as their main duplicate checking database, and some use Wanfang, VIP, Daya and other duplication checking systems.

As an important means to curb academic misconduct such as plagiarism, the dissertation check is widely used by colleges and universities, and each school provides students with a certain number of opportunities to check for free.

However, the number is limited and a maximum of three is generally offered.

In this context, the paid check service came into being.

  "China XX Appraisal Master's Thesis" "Undergraduate PMLC Weight Check System"... Recently, the reporter found that there are many online businesses promoting paid weight check and weight reduction service products.

Entering the keywords of "duplication check of papers" on an e-commerce platform will show that there are supporting classification searches such as "undergraduate", "master's degree", "journal", "professional title", and then a dizzying number of duplicate checking products appear, with prices ranging from tens of yuan To thousands of dollars.

The fee for master and doctoral thesis is the highest, and some websites are as high as 1280 yuan.

  These duplication check products on the market are selling well.

According to statistics on an e-commerce platform, the reporter found that the monthly sales of many shops with duplicate checking services exceeded 10,000, and the highest one exceeded 90,000, and the average monthly sales were basically more than 2,000 times.

According to this calculation, the monthly turnover of each merchant operating duplication checking services on this e-commerce platform can reach hundreds of thousands of yuan to several million yuan.

 Students are helpless

  Check the starting price of the seat, and the results are often inaccurate

  "It was only 180 yuan in March, and it rose to 240 yuan in April..." "The cost of checking weights is getting higher and higher, and you have to be 'slaughtered' once before graduation." Many respondents said that the closer to the graduation season, the higher the degree of degree. The price of the thesis checking service will rise more fiercely.

Xiaoyan (pseudonym), a master's student from a university in Guangdong, said helplessly: "It's expensive, but I still have to buy it. This is what our graduates just need."

  Behind the dissertation review industry chain is the "dissertation anxiety" of students.

Liu, a student from a liberal arts college in a double-first-class university in Guangdong, believes: "For undergraduates who have not published papers or lack the experience of writing graduation thesis, it is not enough to have only one chance to check the duplicates." Many students said that their school is only for the Students are provided with an opportunity to check the weights, but they cannot participate in the defense directly after checking the weights. Therefore, many people choose to purchase weight-checking services on their own before the school’s official weight-checking service.

  For postgraduates, the requirements for checking weights are more stringent.

"The school only provides one opportunity for pre-examination and one formal examination." Xiaoyan said that the format and content revision of the thesis will affect the repetition rate of the paper, and the school provides very limited opportunities for free duplication examination, so you can only choose yourself Find a merchant to pay for a duplicate check.

  It often costs hundreds of yuan to check the thesis, and the most important thing for students is "accuracy".

"The results obtained by different systems are very different. The duplication of my thesis is 10% in the school system. I tried to use some duplication checking services during the revision stage. A certain software is free for duplication checking, and the repetition rate is as high as 22%. A paid duplication checking system is more accurate, and there is almost no difference (with the duplication rate found by the school)," Zeng, a fresh master's graduate, told reporters.

  On the product sales page of duplicate checking products, many merchants directly put out the slogan "The duplicate checking result is consistent with the school result".

According to a businessman, it has successively launched a number of duplicate checking systems by virtue of its "large database and advanced plagiarism rate algorithm", and the error with the school's results is within 3 to 5 percentage points; Endorsement”, claiming that “rechecking reports support the authenticity verification of the official website”; some merchants also promised to “receive three for one fake”.

  It is reported that the characteristics of different disciplines will also have an impact on the effect of weight checking, such as the formulas of science, the provisions of law, and the professional terms of liberal arts.

In the relevant product comment area, some buyers complained that the duplication checking effect of science papers was not ideal, and some formulas could not be recognized, resulting in a lower duplication checking rate than the school results; some law students said that some duplication checking systems could not be identified. The legal provisions were issued, which led to errors in the duplication results.

  Many consumers have reported that some duplication checking systems are just "money misappropriation", and the duplication checking results are inaccurate.

Some students left a message in the comment area - "The same content on the same day has different results" "On this system, only 5%, but the college found 27%, so they can only delay graduation" "The merchant has a bad attitude and promises a refund just for fun. Word games"……

 potential risks

  Uploaded papers may be leaked for resale

  The cost of personal weight checking is very high, and I am afraid it is not only the economic cost.

The reporter found that there is often a certain risk of dissertation leakage when purchasing unknown online duplication checking products.

  The reporter saw in the unannounced visit that in order to dispel consumers' doubts about safety, most businesses will use similar phrases - "the whole process is self-submission by consumers, no human contact, and there is no risk of paper leakage".

Some businesses directly said "we are within the school".

A free duplicate check website also printed a promotional slogan "HUAWEI CLOUD OBS secure storage, SSL transmission encryption, escort papers, no fear of papers leaking".

  However, some students reported that someone had their papers stolen due to duplication checking: "This has formed an industrial chain, and some unscrupulous merchants will download duplication checking reports and sell the papers. A well-known online shopping platform is very It is easy to be leaked, I have a classmate's paper and it was sold, and it was almost postponed last year."

College Response

  Strictly regulate the management of duplicate accounts

  Regarding the situation that businesses advertised as "internal resources of colleges and universities" on the Internet, the reporter consulted some colleges and universities in Guangzhou.

Ms. S, a staff member of a university library under the construction of a pair of first-class universities, said that the school library strictly regulates the management of duplicate accounts. If an individual sells an account to the outside world, it will be traced. The "internal university" statement may be a fraudulent trick of unscrupulous merchants.

If a student has purchased a CNKI account, he/she can also view all the duplicate checking traces in the CNKI system on campus.

  Hu Guangli, deputy dean of the Graduate School of Southern Medical University, also said that at present, the school has not found any phenomenon of providing paid duplication checking services to the outside world. The school strictly controls the use of accounts. All accounts are used by the graduate education management teachers of each unit. It is managed and used by the Graduate School.

  It is reported that some colleges and universities strictly stipulate that the final papers submitted must be checked for the first time on CNKI in order to prevent students from checking the weights without permission.

However, some merchants also target this "pain point" and attract buyers with "traceless duplicate checking" in their advertisements.

HowNet reiterates

  Check duplication does not provide personal user name use

  The reporter searched for “HowNet Check” on Baidu and found that some website pages in the search results are highly similar to the official website of CNKI, and the WeChat avatar of its customer service staff is also similar to the CNKI LOGO. The customer service’s circle of friends It also claims to provide a "fidelity and verifiable CNKI report".

However, after careful observation, it can be found that the domain name address of the website is not consistent with that of CNKI, and the related words and descriptions of CNKI cannot be found in the webpage.

  Regarding some online duplicate checking services under the banner of CNKI, the reporter received a response after sending a letter to CNKI's official mailbox, saying, "CNKI's academic misconduct checking does not provide personal user names, and it is not sold on Taobao."

  Previously, CNKI had stated that some unscrupulous merchants "steal the account of the user unit through technical means such as hacking technology, or obtain the account by contacting the staff of the user unit. The agreement stipulates that the duplicate check cannot be provided to personnel outside the unit. CNKI has discovered and cooperated with relevant departments to investigate and deal with more than 300 infringements.”

  The reporter found that there is a systematic announcement on the homepage of the official website of CNKI’s academic misconduct detection, indicating that it is not open to individuals; for criminals to take advantage of the legitimate use of institutional management loopholes and individual managers to illegally reselling and other means to steal or steal accounts for wanton profit, the Terminate the contract with the user organization involved.

Expert advice

  It is not appropriate to "one-vote veto" because of the repetition rate

  Regarding the anxiety of the current college students' dissertation checking, Professor Liu Tao, Secretary of the Party Committee and Deputy Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University, believes that the current school provides enough opportunities for checking the papers, and the checking system is an auxiliary tool for the school to manage the quality of graduate students. Once it is opened to individual students as a weight-reducing tool, it will encourage academic misconduct and become a tool to avoid plagiarism.

"The external testing institutions lack credibility, and there may be a series of problems such as plagiarism of papers. We do not encourage students to check for duplicates outside."

  Liu Tao further pointed out: "As long as students write papers in accordance with academic standards, they do not need to worry too much about the repetition rate. The repetition rate is not a criterion for judging the quality of a paper, but only the bottom line for judging academic standards. When citing other people's research results, as long as the source is indicated, It does not count as academic misconduct. As for whether excessive citations are related to the quality of papers, the standards of different disciplines are different. This is a matter of academic value judgment, not an issue of academic ethics.”

  "The starting point of the thesis review is to cultivate students' ability to think independently, and to encourage students to express academic opinions in their own language and apply them to thesis writing. The high repetition rate often reflects the lack of students' thinking ability and language organization ability. Hu Guangli said that the thesis review is a better way to promote the improvement of scientific research ability, but the most fundamental measure is to let the school and teachers guide students to actively and correctly do their own scientific research.

  Ms. S, a library staff member, pointed out that the duplicate checking system itself needs to be improved, and different algorithm standards may cause errors in duplicate checking results, such as research methods, proper nouns, technical routes, and formatting language expressions, some of which have been marked. References are simply regarded as suspected plagiarism.

"If you simply pursue a low repetition rate, research papers may also be reduced to word games." She suggested that colleges and universities should change the way they evaluate students' dissertations. Make a judgment after analyzing the situation of the duplicate report in detail, so as to relieve the anxiety of the students.

  Yangcheng Evening News reporter Chen Liang and intern Zheng Minshan