Recommendations Concerning the Use of Turnitin.comFerris State University currently subscribes to Turnitin.com, a plagiarism detection service, under a university license agreement. Faculty may, but are not required to, use Turnitin.com to verify the originality of submitted student work. Faculty who choose to use this service should notify students about their intention to use the service.Students should not be compelled to submit assignments to Turnitin.com. If a student objects to submitting their paper to this service, he or she must notify the instructor, and the instructor and the student should negotiate an acceptable alternative to use of the service. A student's use of an alternative method should not adversely affect that student's grade. The following statements should be shared with students as well: Faculty may, but are not required to, use Turnitin.com to verify the originality of submitted student work. Papers submitted by students and faculty are retained as source documents in the Turnitin.com database for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of submitted papers. Recently, there have been some legal challenges to the service that claim the retention of papers in a database used by a for-profit company infringes on the author's copyrights. No case law has been issued at this time.Copyright Statement Copyright is a form of intellectual property protection granted by Federal statute to original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Protection occurs automatically as soon as the work is fixed and does not require publication or registration with the U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright provides the owner with the following exclusive rights in a work: to reproduce, to prepare derivative works, to distribute by sale or otherwise, to perform publicly; and to display publicly. Unless otherwise negotiated, the ownership of the copyright to a student's original work resides with the author. "Student work" is a work produced by a registered student without the use of University funds (other than Student Financial Aid), and is not produced as part of any University employment, or as a result of a sponsored or contracted activities, or for a commission. Such copyrightable works include papers, computer programs, theses, dissertations, and artistic and musical works. FERPA Statement Ferris State University, as consistent with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99), recognizes the importance of ensuring the privacy of students' personally identifiable information that is associated with educational records, which include written and digital records, files, documents, course materials, and other records containing information directly related to a student and maintained by the University or a party acting for the University. FERPA gives a student the right to consent to the disclosure of his or her educational records. There are, of course, exceptions to this right, which are described more fully by Ferris' Office of Governmental Relations and General Counsel (see, specifically, www.ferris.edu/htmls/administration/president/generalcounsel/GeneralCounsel/ferpa.htm). Identifiable student information should not be submitted to turnitin.com when papers are submitted to check for plagiarism. Last modified: August 28, 2007 |