Anti-Plagiarism Experts Raise Questions About Services with Links to Sites Selling Papers

Anti-Plagiarism Experts Raise Questions About Services With Links to Sites Selling Papers

Two online services that help professors check student papers for plagiarism -- PlagiServe.com and EduTie.com -- appear to have ties to Web sites that sell term papers to students. That has some professors worried that the two services might be secretly selling the very papers that they claim to check.

However, an official of the two anti-plagiarism services denies that they have any connection to term-paper sellers. PlagiServe.com and EduTie.com are run by Oleksiy Shevchenko, who identified himself in a telephone interview as a computer-science student at a university in Ukraine, though he declined to name the institution.

As of last week, Mr. Shevchenko was also listed in a public database of Internet registrants as the "administrative contact" for a company called Cyber Breeze Networks, which is based in Carson City, Nev. That company runs at least three sites that sell papers to students: mightystudents.com, essaymill.com, and essaysonfile.com.

Last week, Louis Bloomfield, a physics professor at the University of Virginia, sent out an e-mail message to several professors and administrators warning "that the two 'plagiarism detection services' are actually fronts for paper mills (AKA 'cheat sites') and that you may want to avoid using those services."

Mr. Bloomfield said that the connection between the sites raises conflict-of-interest questions. "It is entirely possible that papers you submit to those services will later be sold to other students," he wrote.

Mr. Bloomfield added in an interview, however, that he has no proof that any papers have been passed from the anti-plagiarism services to the paper-selling sites.