@article{DBLP:journals/jss/FrantzeskouMSG08,
  author    = {Georgia Frantzeskou and
               Stephen G. MacDonell and
               Efstathios Stamatatos and
               Stefanos Gritzalis},
  title     = {Examining the significance of high-level programming features in source code author classification},
  journal   = {Journal of Systems and Software},
  volume    = {81},
  number    = {3},
  year      = {2008},
  pages     = {447-460},
  ee        = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2007.03.004},
  bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
}

Abstract: 

The use of Source Code Author Profiles (SCAP) represents a new, highly
accurate approach to source code authorship identification that is,
unlike previous methods, language independent.  While accuracy is
clearly a crucial requirement of any author identification method, in
cases of litigation regarding authorship, plagiarism, and so on, there
is also a need to know why it is claimed that a piece of code is
written by a particular author. What is it about that piece of code
that suggests a particular author? What features in the code make one
author more likely than another? In this study, we describe a means of
identifying the high-level features that contribute to source code
authorship identification using as a tool the SCAP method. A variety
of features are considered for Java and Common Lisp and the importance
of each feature in determining authorship is measured through a
sequence of experiments in which we remove one feature at a time. The
results show that, for these programs, comments, layout features and
package-related naming influence classification accuracy whereas
user-defined naming, an obvious programmer related feature, does not
appear to influence accuracy. A comparison is also made between the
relative feature contributions in programs written in the two
languages.  Keywords: Authorship; Source code; Program features; Fraud
 

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