Although markers are not immediately allowed to consult journals, the journal arrives on their desk with the work. Just by looking at a journal, they can tell whether you've done work.
Although you could carry it around, write in it, stick shit in etc (so it looks all good) I doubt any lazy students do that- most of the lazy student's look nice, new, thin and clean.
If a student has taken some of the work and written some, it's obvious as pie. Can I just emphasise that plagiarism is really obvious. Sentence structure changes, the use of a comma changes. Seriously, I've looked at a major work (history) and this one bit of a paragraph just looked odd. It's hard to explain but it's like you're speaking to someone who just changed their accent. The flow fucks up somehow.
Same thing happens with the EE2 mws, although fully-stolen writing would be harder to see.
Like all other subjects, markers are experienced and have done the rounds. If they're not, they've been supervised like hell and have really only taken a observatory role. With EE2, I would forward that every marker has seen (if not read) most works from their genre area. The supervisors read every single work from their genre, and that's a fact.
With the journals- if the marker gets a hint of foul play, they stick their hand up and get the journal/s + mw up to the supervisor marker and tell them that something's odd. The supervisor then gives them permission to look in the journal, or does it themselves. I suppose this could be an argument against journals being persued, although I would say that it shows how easily an experienced English marker can see this.
I'll add at this point that I'm only marking things to do with New Kingdom Egypt, which I've done a tonne of study in. EE2 markers are FAR more experienced than me
