Software like TurnItIn, iThenticate, and Plagiarism Checker allow instructors to upload student papers and, with the click of a button, determine whether or not students have outright copied from another source. What happens in between the upload and the output designation? How do these tools, used by the academic and publishing industries alike, compare papers in progress to innumerable potential sources, and what makes the difference between inspiration and plagiarism? Join us for a conversation on the inner workings of plagiarism detection. 

This event is part of The Art of Research: Inside the Black Box series. “The Black Box” is a STEM metaphor for systems in which one sees inputs and outputs, but not the inner workings. In many ways, the modern research process is one such “Black Box.” In this special series of The Art of Research, we examine the hidden computational processes behind common research tools and techniques. We focus on, to the degree possible, the algorithms and AI principles underlying relevance ranking, automated evaluation, and even publishing practices.