Whenever I need to brush up on the academic ‘voice’, I go to comments on Chronicle of Higher Education online articles. Ideally, comments about something that interests me, like this article on turnitin (which also pointed me to this excellent UW-Madison resource on acknowledging sources and how to paraphrase).
Academic article comments are always full of variety, from the practical to the persnickety. There are always commentors who question the underlying premise, who deny the importance of the issue, who relate it to the financial underpinnings of higher education and the nefarious motives of the administration, and who worry about the consequences for academic freedom or intellectual property. I have a good time assigning different opinions to the Royal Academy’s faculty. Which comment would be written by Linus Ukadnian, and which by Teddy Whin? Which introduces a new and exciting voice that I want to build on?
However, when it comes to turnitin (which I use myself in real life), the topic is not very germane to the Royal Academy. People don’t plagiarize Demonologists — at least, not more than once.
