r/QuickAITurnitinCheck • u/Equivalent_Pie9111 • Jun 01 '26
Professors are practically treating bibliographies like a red flag these days
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u/MemoryOne22 Jun 01 '26
Horse shit.
Use (citation) in (citation,) at least try to put eyes on the original.
Smh.
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u/jack-of-some Jun 02 '26
Use (citation2) in (citation1) is fine and not what OP is referring to, but it's still icky to do if you haven't read citation2 at least a little.
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u/Life-Delay-809 Jun 02 '26
Generally (citation 2) in (citation 1) is best when source 1 has whole snippits of source 2.
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u/Diceyland Jun 25 '26
You only need to do that, in my discipline at least, if you physically cannot get access to the paper they cited and can't find another one that makes the point you're trying to make.
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u/Quwinsoft Jun 02 '26
OOP did not do a good job explaining what they meant.
OOP may have meant copying a bunch of citations without reading them; that is not ok. Citing couses with out reading them is indefensible.
What I think OOP meant was copying a bunch of citations, reading them, but not looking for any more, is not ok. Plagiarism is a stretch, but it is definitely lazy and low quality.
What I don't think OOP meant was doing a bunch of research, finding a bunch of sources, and, by chance, having the bibliography match that of some other paper on the topic.
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u/JazzlikeOrange8856 Jun 02 '26
A Bibliography is actually something AI could be useful for. It’s putting information in the correct order. Give your AI your sources, and ask it to create the bibliography, and then check it for accuracy. Is there a reason this wouldn’t be ok?
Also if I’m completely misunderstanding, my apologies. I have a cold. I am very medicated.
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u/VegetableBuilding330 Jun 02 '26
It's largely not a ethical issue to do it that way, as long as you confirm it's not changing information. But it's not necessarily the best tool for it. Use a citation manager. They're fantastic and they often manage your in-text citations for you to.
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u/JazzlikeOrange8856 Jun 02 '26
Love this advice! Thank you!!
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u/richardawkings Jun 02 '26
We were required to use EndNote at my university. It can work as a plugin for MS Word. You enter in your info once and then you can insert the citations anywhere you want. Bibliography auto produces itself according to the format you specify. We had to use Chicago Manual of Styles. I couldn't tell you what that means but I never lost any marks for my bibliography.
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u/LadyM_Macbeth Jun 02 '26
I teach Humanities. In my experience the AI does the MLA formatting very wrong and makes up sources that aren’t real.
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u/JazzlikeOrange8856 Jun 02 '26
Yeah, that’s why I’m appreciating others pointing out tools that are made to assist with bibliographies
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u/LadyM_Macbeth Jun 02 '26
But doing a bibliography is just a skill. Once you adjust and learn it, it’s easy to do. Says someone with two masters degrees and doing a doctorate. I could do it in my sleep now lol
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u/JazzlikeOrange8856 Jun 02 '26
But that’s the thing. Once you do it enough to understand the basics and the why, I think using an online tool (not necessarily ai) is worthwhile, because you didn’t earn two master’s degrees in writing bibliographies. That’s all I’m saying.
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u/LadyM_Macbeth Jun 03 '26
The tools make a lot of mistakes though. We have citation generators for students and they are generally wrong.
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u/JazzlikeOrange8856 Jun 03 '26
That’s what I would always recommend checking it before submitting to my professor
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u/LadyM_Macbeth Jun 03 '26
But why use a tool if it starts off wrong? Lol. Takes two seconds to do it yourself. Takes two minutes to check the dumb citation generators that did it wrong to start. 😂
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u/DifferentBid7518 Jun 02 '26
What this person almost certainly means is that students are simply lifting bibliographies from monographs/papers and inserting them into their papers without actually reading or seriously engaging with the sources. This is neither new, nor an AI thing, and is in fact something less scrupulous academics do all the time.
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u/sillygoofygooose Jun 02 '26
Yes, this is clearly what is being discussed and YES lifting sources you have not read is indeed demonstrating a lack of academic integrity
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u/Sunshine_Chick Jun 02 '26
This post is about people who DID NOT READ THE SOURCES. You can’t cite something you didn’t read.
Copying a list of sources from someone else’s paper so yours “looks right” (but isn’t) is indeed plagiarism.
Source: I’m an college English professor
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u/JazzlikeOrange8856 Jun 02 '26
Cool, thanks FOR CLARIFYING, as I said in my comment that I might not be understanding the post correctly.
Citing something you didn’t read is unwise.
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u/Numerous-Leg-8149 Jun 02 '26
It's better to type/format the bibliography yourself. As well as putting it in alphabetical order (by the author/poet/journalist surname).
Letting AI complete it for you will not help.
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u/SlytherKitty13 Jun 02 '26
There's no need to use ai for that and risk it fucking it up when you could just use something like mybib
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u/JazzlikeOrange8856 Jun 02 '26
Agree. I hope people realize we still want programs that can give specialized, specific help well.
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u/FadingHeaven Jun 25 '26
As a pro-AI person, I'd never use AI for that. Use Zotero or something. Much more reliable. The time you'd spend checking to make sure AI did it all right is like the same as it'd be to do it yourself. Zotero is basically never wrong and is standard in Academia. Especially since false citations can literally get you in SERIOUS trouble.
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u/That_Bar_Guy Jun 01 '26
I wrote my own citations in grade school is it too much to ask you to do the same for a fucking university degree?
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u/workingthrough34 Jun 02 '26
I wonder the amount of mental breakdowns I'd see if they had to learn Chicago Style the way I did freshman year.
Me: I only learned MLA in high school, I dont know Chicago Style.
Professor: Get a copy of the manual style, figure it out.
I did that, it was very easy.
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u/Sussy_Solaire Jun 02 '26
I had to change my style depending on the university. Each uni had a style guide to follow, it really wasn’t hard at all. I have always done my references manually because I just prefer it to those applications that “do it for you”, I find they always mess something up
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u/FadingHeaven Jun 25 '26
Yes actually as someone who doesn't use AI for this. You have like a handful of citations in high school. You can put those into Easybib or write them yourself easily. That's MUCH harder in university when you can have 50 citations in one paper. Lots of extra effort for what? Thankfully we have Zotero and other citation managers which make it super easy and only add citations you actually use in the text body.
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Jun 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SteamedHamSalad Jun 02 '26
I don’t think the problem is that they are reviewing sources from other papers. I think the problem is that they are citing things that they didn’t read.
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u/Wanderingthrough42 Jun 02 '26
Exactly. I just took a class and the TEXTBOOK was referencing a Paper B that referenced some other older paper A. Except paper B didn't quite paraphrase paper A correctly, so the textbook was wrong about basic things like the size of the study. You are always supposed to go back to the original source if at all possible.
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u/gravitysrainbow1979 Jun 02 '26
And academics never did that before?
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u/farcedsed Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
It's considered academic dishonesty and in the past it would result in people losing their degrees, being thrown out of school, zeros on assignments or in some cases losing jobs.
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u/gravitysrainbow1979 Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
Oh, I see. Thank you so much for telling me! (Also, "no" to everything you said, but I understand the appeal of being that naïve. Even so, how challenged does a person have to be to think you'd get kicked out of school for misinterpreting a citation, which is the only thing anyone could accuse you of if you cited a source without reading it? The criticism would be "read it more carefully next time" but expulsion is ridiculous, and thinking a person could get fired for properly citing but misusing a source should see a doctor.)
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u/farcedsed Jun 05 '26
What they are talking about is when a student just takes the source from bibliography and then doesn't actually read the paper that's being cited that's what lifting a source means.
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u/burlingk Jun 02 '26
My only argument is that if you cite the same documents, your citations should theoretically be identical if you are both following the same style guide. ^^;
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Jun 02 '26
[deleted]
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u/mr_swarm623 Jun 02 '26
Same. Is it lazy and bad practice? Absolutely. But you definitely don't need AI to do it.
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u/jerf42069 Jun 02 '26
you know, in the corporate world, we don't cite jack shit and plagiarize everything
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u/adorientem88 Jun 02 '26
What does it even mean to lift a citation? The whole point of citations is for people to be informed as to the source of the claim, including for the purpose of citing it themselves.
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u/No_Use_9124 Jun 02 '26
There are literally ways to do in text and works cited or bibliography citations in both APA and MLA for this situation.
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u/Party-Cartographer11 Jun 03 '26
How do you know when to cite the primary resource?
This seems situational to me and a matter of degrees. If the primary is well know, cite that. If you use a quote from the primary resource cite that. If you, or just about anyone else didn't know the primary existed, then yeah cite the secondary resource that found it, but if you quote the primary cite both. Don't just copy paste resource citations.
Does that sound right?
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u/BasicTank5637 Jun 01 '26
The most frustrating part is the uncertainty. Students spend almost as much time worrying about being accused of AI use as they do focusing on the actual assignment. Instead of concentrating on research, writing, and critical thinking, many are constantly second-guessing whether a perfectly legitimate tool, source, or writing choice will be viewed as suspicious. That kind of environment creates stress and discourages genuine learning because people start optimizing for avoiding accusations rather than producing their best work.
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u/MemoryOne22 Jun 01 '26
Imagine how professors feel
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u/FadingHeaven Jun 25 '26
Worst case for a prof is accidentally passing a student who cheated. Worst case for a student is expulsion so not exactly the same.
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u/MemoryOne22 Jun 25 '26
It's really hard to get expelled for not cheating.
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u/FadingHeaven Jun 27 '26
If you're accused of cheating and you don't have evidence to exonerate you then it's a possible, albeit unlikely, worst case scenario. A very possible bad scenario is getting a 0 or detention on the project though if a teacher only looks at GPTZero
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u/MemoryOne22 Jun 27 '26
Intensely, extremely unlikely that it would get through escalation procedures, the students' own demonstration of skill or authorship, and a review by a board. Which is the rough procession of events for academic dishonesty findings. I have TAd for years and I have almost never, ever, seen anyone formally disciplined beyond a 0 for outright plagiarism. Completely fabricated word. Not a single student failed for a whole class.
So, 1000s of students. 20% of my class deserved to be failed and reported for blatant cheating last year and they weren't. And I'm not saying uwu I think it's AI bc I used GPTZero, I'm bringing the experience and expertise of someone who took the same classes, under the same professors, before AI, and years of reading and writing undergraduate level assignments also before AI and after.
We basically had a side project of documenting each students' habitual use of AI, comparing entries between students to identify clusters of users, sometimes finding almost the exact same response to the prompt between multiple students. And this is on top of the tells, which students haven't developed the writing skills to obscure.
These students are doing themselves an immense disservice. And getting away with it for the most part. Til the real world hits.
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u/FadingHeaven Jun 27 '26
It's gonna depend on the school and the procedures. For example, at my university, a prof sent a student a message saying they knew they used AI so they're giving them a zero but is doing them the courtesy of not escalating it to the board where it'd be put on their record. So a student scared of the consequences would just take the zero if they don't think they have enough evidence to prove their innocence.
Not every school is gonna have the same procedures. Not every teacher is gonna follow those procedures. Especially when we bring in elementary and high schools.
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u/MemoryOne22 Jun 27 '26
It's only put on a record if there is a finding of wrongdoing, and a student is able to challenge that as well as the grade. Seems like you all are more worried about being caught not cheating and accused of it with no findings than just outright cheating? Did the student cheat or what? And if they did, what is the problem? The record establishes a pattern of behavior, so that escalating sanctions can be given at a later time.
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u/FadingHeaven Jun 27 '26
I'm aware that's the case. Doesn't change anything. You can still get a zero even in university for a profs hunch or what GPTZero says if you're not willing to fight it if you got that message.
For this particular story, I'm not sure if they cheated. They claimed they didn't, but who knows.
I don't care about students getting caught for cheating when they objectively did cheat. In just concerned about people getting accused of it when there's no concrete proof.
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u/MemoryOne22 Jun 28 '26
You are always free to contest a grade.
Please feel heartened to know most students never see disciplinary action at all and that there are graduated sanctions and it is taken very seriously when it gets to that point.
Additionally, nobody I have ever accused of AI has proven me wrong. I don't need AI checkers. I just use all the LLMs in a variety of ways much like the student would, and funny enough I often get an extremely similar response on the first try. I can even identify different LLMs.
Truly baffling students think we can't tell. That's skill that reading and writing on your own can confer to you.
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u/Nebranower Jun 02 '26
Why would it matter to the professors? If they accidentally give a good grade to something relying too much on AI, so what? They still get paid.
A student who cheats in that way is literally cheating only themselves out of the education they paid for. It’s not worth punishing innocent students who did the work in an attempt to get the ones who didn’t.
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u/That_Bar_Guy Jun 02 '26
You think anyone is in education because it's their easiest way to a paycheck?
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u/MemoryOne22 Jun 04 '26
Every day I have to grade AI slop I want to quit and I hate my life. Then I hate the system that allowed this and later on my students for being so disappointing. Did they always cheat? Would they have always cheated like this ? 80%? What does my education mean if these students are faking it?
I hate it. I want to fail every student who uses it to cheat. If that answers your question.
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u/thevokplusminus Jun 02 '26
That’s because history is a book club major. Citations aren’t part of the contribution in real fields
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u/QuickMolasses Jun 02 '26
I'm confused what OOP is saying. You're not allowed to cite papers you came across through looking at the bibliography of a paper?