Knowledge Management and the Control of Duplication

Abstract

International co-operation has grown enormously with the advent of the Internet. Its universal acceptance and availability has lead to several major initiatives in the education market place where globalisation and its promise of greater access for all are exploited by the many University programmes aimed at independent and distance learners. Unfortunately the ease of data transfer and downloading has led to considerable duplication of content. When considered generally as Knowledge Management and Duplication Control we see the wider arena for our work, however our initial concern is the electronic classification of plagiarism and the submission process in the e-university. Any system designed to help manage this proliferation of data must allow the user to submit their work electronically whereupon automatic checking for duplication is conducted prior to delivery to the assessment system. By developing a modular system it is possible to continue development as the material and data types checked are broadened. The paper provides an introduction to the specific problem of plagiarism and prior research in the area. We discuss system requirements for our implementation. Details of the submission and content checking subsystems are provided. Results are provided for some text based tests.