Paper mill (essays)

From Freepedia

An online paper mill is a website where students can download essays, either free or for a service charge. Online paper mills usually contain a large, searchable database of essays. Most paper mills today offer customized writing services, usually charging by the page. Some sites now even offer ready-made college application essays from applicants who have been accepted.

Types of paper mills

Most paper mills have thousands of essays by doing a program known as an essay exchange. A student who wants to download an essay from the site must first submit an essay. An essay database can grow very rapidly with this exchange method. However, a serious problem is that there is no control over quality. A student can submit a lower quality paper in exchange for an 'A' level paper. That lower quality essay then becomes part of the database for others to download. As the process continues unchecked, the essay site offers standards spiraling down in quality. Sites such as Cheat House are good examples of 'open' database systems.

A second form of paper mills, logically, would be 'closed' essay databases. These sites maintain the quality and integrity of their essays by not allowing anonymous users to submit and "exchange" papers unchecked. In fact, high-quality paper mills do not offer this program at all. The site editors are the only ones allowed to post essays online. Such sites are known to be more reliable in producing "A" level term papers and essays. Sites such as Valedictorian Essays are good closed-source essay databases.

Paper mills and counter-plagiarism

The exploding number of commercial paper mills has led to the rise in plagiarism and academic dishonesty. Groups have taken the initiative in "anti-cheating" websites like turnitin.com to deter cheaters, by comparing a student's term paper against well known paper mills. However, custom written essays are impossible to detect even by such sites, and such services are now prevalent on the Internet.

External links

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