Digenis.org

If you’re a new reader to this site you may not be aware of an ongoing series I started back in 2004, when I was a student at Moscow International University. The series is called ‘Academic Integrity po-russky’ and explores the lax attitude towards plagiarism in Russian academic circles and the controversy that’s come up against initiatives to curb it.

My previous posts told of the wide-scale plagiarism I saw as a student, how one could buy research papers in the Moscow metro, the ingenuity of Russian shpargalki (crib-sheets), and Russian LiveJournal reactions to the accusations that Putin himself was a plagiarizer (gasp!).

I’ll just begin this post with a short humorous quip I heard as I was asking some Russians about this topic:

“Списывание с одного источника - плагиат, с двух - компиляция, с трёх и более - диссертация.”

“Copying from another source is called ‘plagiarism’. Copying from two sources is called ‘a compilation’. Copying from three or more sources is called ‘a dissertation’.

Whether or not you think plagiarism is a big deal, it’s clear that it’s becoming a hotter issue in educational institutions thanks to peer-to-peer networks, where users trade not only pirated music and video, but also documents and research papers. There are also a few websites, for example, 5ballov.ru (5 points, the Russian equivalent of an A+ mark), where Russian students can freely download tens of thousands of term papers on a number of subjects.

Kommersant Newspaper last Thursday ran an article entitled ‘Антиплагиат не пройдет’ (Anti-plagiarism Won’t be Tolerated) about the controversy over a website where Russian instructors can check their students’ papers for instances of plagiarism.

The web application, which resides at Antiplagiat.ru, has in fact been around since 2005. According to the website, the purpose of the initiative is ‘to improve the quality of the Russian education system, specifically in those areas where students are required to write research papers, term reports, and other original compositions’. As of September 21, 2007, the Antiplagiat database contains over 10,600,000 documents with which it compares the papers uploaded and checked by instructors. Since its launch, many institutes, universities, and even the Russian Ministry of Education have given their support to the project.

As it turns out, the site is also frequented by students themselves, no doubt using the service to see if the complex algorithms can indeed detect instances of ‘borrowing’ in their course work. In fact, one of the more active threads at the Antiplagiat Forums is titled ‘How to get around the system’, where many students have voiced their frustrations:

Наша кафедра взяла на вооружение антиплагиат…. млин, я никогда так не мучался с курсовой!!! (Петров Иван Аликович

Our department is now armed with the Antiplagiat system… Dang, I’ve never been so tormented by a term paper!!! (Ivan Alikovich Petrov)

and

Готов заплатить больше, чем Министерство образование (за создание сайта) - только бросьте этот, по-моему, “дурацкий” проект. (Пономарев Алексей Владимирович)

I’m willing to outpay the Ministry of Education (to build a site) - just abandon this stupid project (Aleksei Vladimirovich Ponomarev)

The commentary goes on and on with people’s suggestions on how to ‘fool’ the system and the moderators’ claims that it cannot be fooled. The author of the Kommersant article tracked down a Russian hacker named Georgi who claims to have created a program called ‘Killer’, which can effectively fool the Antiplagiat system.

Here’s a screenshot of the results of feeding a plagiarized paper through Antiplagiat:

The table shows three instances of plagiarism and their original sources.

Whether or not any such services could effectively curb plagiarism is still up for debate; students will either use their creativity to write original papers or they will use it to find ways around the system. Student groups in the United States have been successful in pressuring their universities to cease using such systems under the premise that it’s an infringement of their intellectual property rights for their papers to be added automatically to these databases.

In my opinion, the real test of determining whether such a system could actually work actually rests with the instructors and professors. Do they really have the time or will power to digitize and upload each paper of each of their students, then weeding out false positives? With the relatively low salaries of teachers, I highly doubt that many of them would consider it worth their time. I’d give the Antiplagiat site an ‘A for effort’, but I don’t think it passes the test in practicality.

“Зимы ждала, ждала природа. Снег выпал толкьо в �нваре…�

З�МК�ДЬЕ - так на интрнет-форумах называют территории, про�тирающие�� за Мо�ков�кой кольцевой автодорогой.

Болшой Город нам ра��кажет, где покупать еду в Мо�кве..

The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev, has revived talks of reforming the Kazakh alphabet to use a Latin script rather than Cyrillic. After the collapse of the USSR several other former Soviet republics did the same (Turkmenistan, Moldova, and Uzbekistan in the mid 90’s; Azerbaijan in 2001) in order to cut some of their ties to Russia.

According to an October 19th US State Department press briefing, the US Board on Geographic Names has decided to change the official US English spelling of the Ukrainian capital from Kiev (pronounced Ke-yev) to Kyiv (pronounced Keev). The new version reflects the Ukrainian transliteration of the name, while the old spelling came from the Russian transliteration.

The population of Ukraine is split in two, with half of its citizens being Russian-speakers and half being Ukrainian-speakers. Of course, it would seem that the State Department has now taken sides…

Many people see this as a US tactic to woo Ukraine further to the West, the direction that President Viktor Yuschenko has been taking the country since he came to power after the 2004 Orange Revolution. Call it what you like, but supporters say that the US is just coming in line with the spelling standards of international organizations like the UN and NATO.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey says, “…I don’t think this decision has anything reflective in it.” But if we’re putting all politics aside, what about the scores of other cities with English spellings far off from their native pronunciations? Why is Myanmar still referred to as Burma in the US? Will Moscow ever become Moskva? Will Munich become Munchen?

Though Kyiv will now be used on all maps produced in the United States, it would seem that not everyone is ready to board the ship just yet. According to this article in the International Herald, the Associated Press will continue to spell the Ukrainian capital as Kiev.

I suppose only time will tell if this change will stick.

Kратчайший путь между �танци�ми Мо�ков�кого метрополитена. Также под�читывает врем�, затрачиваемое на поездку между �танци�ми, но �омневаю�ь, что резултаты очень точние.

I said I’d post some quick observations on the Ukrainian language. All I have time for now:

• I mentioned in the last post that it can be humorous for Russian-speakers to see and hear Ukrainian. When walking down the streets and seeing signs that read продукти, пошта, and Ñ�лухай it’s easy to think you’re in a country of poor spellers.
• One thing that you’ll notice quickly about Ukrainian is that, unlike Russian, it lacks o in closed syllables. For example, when you enter the metro you’ll see the word вхід on the door. “Oh, вход becomes вхід.â€� I thought to myself. Of course, I was a little confused when I saw немає входу (no entrance). When I saw a few more examples, like він, вона, and воно (he, she, and it) and рік and році (nominative and locative year) it became clear to me that the o can come back when the noun is declined. Interesting.
• One of the first words I picked up in Ukrainian was Ñ�мачно, which means ‘tasty’. I’m guessing it came through Polish smak from German schmack (flavour). In Russian there’s the word вкуÑ�но/вкуÑ�ный for tasty, but there’s also the more colloquial variant Ñ�мачный and the verb Ñ�маковать, which means to savour or relish something . Also, youth these days use the slangish Ñ�мачно to mean cool.
• Україно моÑ� мила! Ukrainian is the only East Slavic language to have retained the vocative case

My curiosity is certainly sparked. I’ll be taking a look at Ukrainian language (but no, I’m not attempting to learn it; my hands are full with Russian) and grammar in the next few weeks. It’s disputed history is of great interest to me.