A SCOTTISH shell firm is offering “plagiarism-free warranties” for academic work it says it can write for students.
Clever Networks runs “essay mills” – a service condemned by Scottish universities as “acting immorally on all levels” – using a mail drop address in Lanarkshire.
The Herald last year revealed the firm was behind three other websites offering similar services to students around the world.
READ MORE: Annie Lennox: Trump's 'locker room talk' acted as catalyst to empower woman
Now it can be revealed as the formal owner of a fourth site, ExtraEssay.com, which guarantees its products are “plagiarism-free”.
Universities and school authorities have repeatedly warned that students can not use such sites and that anyone who does risks serious penalties, including expulsion.
However, ExtraEssay says its products pass anti-plagiarism software used by universities because it is already tested.
The website said: “We consistently check for plagiarism before the papers are sent to you. This ensures the originality of our writers’ work.
“Each paper is run with a robust and up to date specially designed plagiarism software tool.”
The site also stresses its products are designed to help students learn how to write essays, not for them to pass its work off as their own.
The Herald wanted to ask the site’s managers why they needed plagiarism-free texts to instruct students in essay-writing. However, neither the Glasgow nor the US number provided by the site was operational.
The website, in imperfect English, says it is “a Scotland-
incorporated firm... with over 10 hundred clients annually”.
It gives the address of Clever Networks’s Scottish virtual office, a firm of accountants in the Main Street of the South Lanarkshire mining village of Douglas.
Other essay mills using the same address and linked to Clever Networks are www.handmadewritings.com and www.writingsguru.com, both of which used a Scottish telephone contact number, and www.essaysusa.com.
A spokeswoman for Universities Scotland, which represents all higher learning institutions in the country, last year said: “These ‘essay mills’ and other companies offering similar services are acting immorally on all levels.”
Last year representatives of Handmade Writings, who did not give full names, cautioned The Herald against “labelling” their work as “unethical”.
They referred to their terms of use which say “all products are provided solely as examples of research, reference, and/or for you to learn how to properly write a paper in a particular citation style”.
READ MORE: Annie Lennox: Trump's 'locker room talk' acted as catalyst to empower woman
The terms of use add “if the customer is going to use materials we provide, he is required to reference the material we provided, indicating that our company is the owner of the material”.
ExtraEssay.com claims to have a decade’s experience in providing academics work. Its website was created last year.
Its parent company Clever Networks was incorporated in November 2013 as a Scottish limited partnership and is under no obligation to pay taxes, file accounts or reveal its owners.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here