Faculty members will have an easier time spotting unoriginal work when Ohio State tests turnitin.com, a plagiarism prevention system, in the coming fall quarter.

Turnitin.com analyzes students’ papers for plagiarism against a database of past work. The program searches more than 40 million old papers over the Internet, a database of books and journals dating back seven years and more than 20 million stories that have been submitted to the program’s creators, said John Barrie, founder and CEO of iParadigms, the company that runs turnitin.com.

“It was designed for those hard working students who do the work,” Barrie said. Students who do not cheat should be angry that students who cheat do not get caught, he said.

“We receive around 40,000 papers everyday, of which we find 30 percent of them to be less than original,” he said.

OSU is preparing to test the effectiveness of the Web site.

“Depending on our satisfaction, we will negotiate the price with turnitin.com.” said Peter Pappas, coordinator of the Committee on Academic Misconduct. He said he expects many faculty members will want to use the program.

The idea for turnitin.com came about after students cheated their way to a degree at the University of California-Berkeley, Barrie said.

OSU is one of several institutions offering the program, Barrie said.

“We have clients in more than 80 countries worldwide,” he said. “Every university in the United Kingdom uses turnitin.com.”

The University of Colorado started using turnitin.com in 2001 when it implemented an Honor Code for students, said Becky Kinyon, office manager of the Honor Code at the University of Colorado.

“It has been very successful for us,” Kinyon said. “It is used by about 130-140 teachers, and new students are more aware of the software.

“It tells the percentage of plagiarized material of the document,” Kinyon said. “It tells where it was plagiarized from and everything else you would need to know.”

The turnitin.com Web site is a growing and successful company that is doubling in size each year, Barrie said.

Despite its success, the cost may deter others from using it, Kinyon said.

“We are considering switching servers,” she said. “The price is high, around $1,500 an account, and it is quite costly per year.”

If OSU makes a deal with turnitin.com, each faculty member who shows interest will have an account, Pappas said.

“The faculty can give students access to their account so they can submit their work,” Pappas said. “Then Turnitin sends back a report that shows which parts are similar to other papers.”

Turnitin.com is not designed to make students fearful of submitting written work, Barrie said. It is not about catching students cheating, but about deterring the problem before it happens, he said.

The service will benefit anyone who uses it, Pappas said. There are hundreds of cases of plagiarism each year and this service will be successful in preventing the number from growing, he said.

Kinyon said there has been a decrease in the amount of plagiarism at the University of Colorado and turnitin.com has served as a deterrent to students who know about it.

Plagiarism prevention is “becoming the next generation’s spell checker,” Barrie said.

“We are similar to a referee on the football field,” he said. “They are there to make sure that the athletes are playing by the same set of rules.”