What: A site that screens
for plagiarism
Who: John M. Barrie of
Turnitin.com, a division of iParadigms LLC
Where: Oakland,
California
When: Started in June 1998
When he worked as a teaching assistant at the University of
California, Berkeley, John M. Barrie, 35, saw firsthand the problem
academic dishonesty posed to educational institutions. So after he
graduated in 1998, he and a group of eight friends launched a Web
site designed to help teachers catch dishonest students. Today,
four of Barrie's co-founders remain in the business--Christian
Storm, 31; Emmanuel Briand, 33; Melissa Lipscomb, 31; and Todd
Huddleston, 34.
Called Turnitin.com, the system scans high school and college
students' work for plagiarism. Students submit a digital
version of their term papers online, and Turnitin.com screens the
papers against three databases. The business got off to a good
start, thanks to $2 million in start-up capital raised from family
and friends.
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Today, the antiplagiarism system has been adopted by the
University of California system, every university in the United
Kingdom, Cornell, Duke, Rutgers, and thousands of high schools
worldwide. Sales for 2003 are expected to exceed $5 million.

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