The approaching beginning of summer is announced not only by blooming nature, but also by groups of students gathering near public libraries and cafes. At the moment, students are writing their term papers or final papers, which for many of them causes unpleasant feelings and stress. As a result, many students resort to cheating and submit plagiarized or written papers. Oxsico, a Lithuanian startup that offers smart solutions, is struggling with this problem.
"Plagiarism is the theft of someone else's intellectual work. Therefore, if we do not block the way to plagiarism, we will, albeit indirectly, support the culture of theft, which is an important social problem. There is enough talk about tax evasion or the harm of using pirated content on the Internet in the public sphere, but fraud in the scientific sphere still does not receive enough attention. This reason is the main incentive for us to act and try to improve the education situation in the country", says Chorst Klaus, one of the founders of the Oxsico startup.
Fraud in higher education is a serious problem in Lithuania
Lithuanian students are among the most cheating students in the world. When comparing fraud indicators, Lithuania is on a similar level with Russia, Brazil, Nigeria and very far from such Northern and Western European countries as Finland, Switzerland, Sweden or Germany. As practice shows, students usually buy works done by other people or paste them from several copies of already written works.
"Although independent thesis writing is one of the greatest sources of knowledge, many students do not value it and submit dishonestly written theses. The problem has become particularly relevant recently, when many universities were forced to combine contact and distance learning. Students have lost contact with their educational institutions and their responsibilities, and the problems of plagiarism that existed before have not disappeared," says Chorst Klaus.
According to one of the founders of Oxsico, even harsh punishments do not deter students from dishonest behavior: fraudsters are given negative grades and expelled from academic institutions. Despite this, students decide to cheat, and the most important reason for this is the lack of knowledge and competences not acquired during their studies. For example, the inability to plan time or work with different sources of information.
Smart solutions are needed to solve the problem
Until recently, distinguishing between freelance work was really difficult. One such way is checking individual jobs in information databases. Such checking took up a lot of the valuable time of the teachers checking the papers, so the authenticity of the written works was decided by relying on intuition rather than measured arguments.
The existing need to solve the problem of plagiarism prompted the Oxsico developers to create a text overlap detection system. The Lithuanian startup provides an easy and simple way to compare the available text with scientific articles available in scientific databases. In addition to this key indicator, the company also analyzes fair paraphrasing, citation data, and captures attempts to cheat the authentication program.
"The program we are developing is unique because it supports checking over a hundred different languages and is not limited to English. Support for Lithuanian and other languages is one of the reasons why higher education institutions in Lithuania and other countries willingly choose the solutions provided by Oxsico. In addition, thanks to partners like CORE, we have one of the largest databases of scientific articles compared to our competitors. The trust given motivates us and encourages us to seek positive changes. Therefore, we hope that Lithuanian students will not be tempted by the easy way and will write their papers honestly and responsibly", concludes Chorst Klaus.
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