A student union in Halifax has successfully lobbied against the use of an Internet tool that professors use to detect plagiarism in essays.

The website, www.turnitin.com, is used by 4,000 universities. It allows professors to upload essays, then perform a search against all other essays in its database. If a match of eight or more consecutive words is found, the essay becomes flagged as possibly plagiarized.

The students' union at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax waged a successful battle against the site, claiming control of the intellectual property should be left in the hands of students.

"Students should have control over their own intellectual property," MSVU Students' Union President Chantal Brushett told Canada AM.

"When a student passes in a paper to the professor, they should have the peace of mind that that is as far as it's going to go.

"They shouldn't have the suspicion that their paper is going to become part of the for-profit company that is turnitin.com. We do not condone plagiarism in any way, however we do support academic integrity."

Brushett said the union's primary concern is that a for-profit company is making money from students' work. It shouldn't be necessary, she said.

"There are other checks and measures that can be used to check for plagiarism. Plagiarism existed far before turnitin.com. Professors checked for it then and I'm confident the can still do so," Brushett said.

The union suggests professors can use other search engines which don't save the essay in a database and don't retain the author's name.

She also said librarians can be very helpful in determining whether work has been lifted from another source.

The university accepted the union's argument, and has decided against using the software which it had already purchased.

Across town at Dalhousie University the program is in effect, and faculty has no plans to stop using it.

"From our experience, it is a very helpful tool but it's one among a variety of techniques that we have to use, including really increasing our education of students about what is plagiarism and what is academic dishonesty," Sam Scully, Dalhousie's vice president of academic and provost told Canada AM.

The program has been in use for about four years at Dalhousie. With the internet making vast amounts of information readily accessible, the service has helped professors determine when plagiarism has taken place, Scully said.

He noted that the website is especially helpful when professors are dealing with large volumes of essays on a broad range of topics.

The students' union at Dalhousie has some concerns with the practice, but in general it supports the use of the program, Scully said.

"They do have concerns along the lines that Chantal is mentioning, and, in particular, they raised with us very recently there should be an opt-out provision for students, and we're revisiting the various concerns students have about the use of the website," Scully said. 

The system isn't useful in all situations, Scully said. Students often reference other essays in their work, which is perfectly acceptable as long as the work is properly attributed. However the system can't spot the difference, Scully said.