Style analysis for source code plagiarism detection
Olfat M. Mirza · Warwick Research Archive Portal (University of Warwick) · 2015
Plagiarism has become an increasing problem in higher education in recent years.A number of research papers have discussed the problem of plagiarism in terms of text and source code and the techniques to detect it in various contexts.There is a variety of easy ways of copying others' work because the source code can be obtained from online source code banks and textbooks, which makes plagiarism easy for students.Source code plagiarism has a very specific definition, and Parker and Hamblen define plagiarism on software as "A program that has been produced from another program with a small number of routine transformations".The transformations can range from very simple changes to very difficult ones, which can be one of the six levels of program modifications that are given by Faidhi and Robinson.Coding style is a way to detect source code plagiarism because it relates to programmer personality without affecting the logic of a program, and can be used to differentiate between different code authors.This paper reviews a number of publications which report style comparison to detect source code plagiarism in order to determine research gaps and explore areas where this approach can be improved.A summary of the plagiarism techniques in which style analysis can help identify plagiarism is presented.