Inside Higher Education has
a piece on Turnitin.com and its proposed sponsorship of academics who publish/present papers on Turnitin's abilities.
I've wondered about this kind of practice ever since I presented a paper criticizing Criterion and e-rater for a lack of depth. While researching the paper, I had difficulty finding critical essays, both online and in academic journals such as Computers and Composition. After a time, I began to see the same names, both on
ETS's site as well as in academic journals.
It seemed to me that the majority of academic publishing on Criterion and E-Rater was coming from within ETS, by their own employees. Of course, this is a somewhat common practice: Google hosts a site of employee publications. The difference, though, is that most of Google's publications are not on specific Google technologies but, instead, the theory and practice behind those technologies. In the case of ETS, the papers I encountered read like advertisements, going through the features of the software without providing any criticism. Not only did this make it seem like the product was a good one, it also made it hard to say anything different, since the source code for the product is closed.
Update:
There's a good write-up here.
