Academic Writing: March 2014

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Top 10 FREE Plagiarism Detection Tools

The act of taking someone else’s ideas and passing them off as your own defines the concept of “plagiarism”. As it is shown by the growing educational concerns, plagiarism has now become an integral part of our digital lives as technology, with the billions of information it gives us access to, led to the exacerbation of this phenomenon.

Anti-Plagiarism Anti-Plagiarism is a software designed to effectively detect and thereby prevent plagiarism. It is a versatile tool to deal with World Wide Web copy-pasting information from the assignment of authorship. The goal of this program is to help reduce the impact of plagiarism on education and educational institutions. At present, it distributes free software to detect plagiarism. Checking documents in a format *.rtf, *.doc, *.docx, *.pdf
DupliChecker DupliChecker is a tool 100% free to use. Just copy-paste, or upload your essay, thesis, website content or articles, and click ‘search’, and you’ll get the analysis reports within seconds.
PaperRater Paper Rater offers three tools: Grammar Checking, Plagiarism Detection and Writing Suggestions. It is a free resource that is developed and maintained by linguistics professionals and graduate students. It is absolutely free to use and it allows you to check for plagiarized parts in your students’ essays.
Plagiarisma.net Plagiarisma has a search box as well as a software download available for Windows. Users can also search for entire URLs and files in HTML, DOC, DOCX, RTF, TXT, ODT and PDF formats.
PlagiarismChecker PlagiarismChecker.com makes it simple for educators to check whether a student's paper has been copied from the Internet. Users can also use the "Author" option to check if others have plagiarized their work online. It is very easy to use as it does not require any download or installation.
Plagium Plagium is a free plagiarism detection tool. It’s very easy to use. All you have to do is paste in the original portion of text (max 250 characters) and hit "search. It is available in six languages and an Alert feature is also available.
PlagTracker Plagtracker is another online plagiarism detection service that checks whether similar text content appears elsewhere on the web. It starts scanning all internet pages and more than 20 million academic works for any plagiarized copy. After scanning, you will receive a report with details about your work.
Viper Viper is a fast plagiarism detection tools with the ability to scan your document through more than 10 billion resources, such as academic essays and other online sources, offering side-by-side comparisons for plagiarism. It’s free and you can download it very easily. Just keep in mind that it requires a download. Just note that Viper is available to Microsoft Windows users only.
SeeSources SeeSources is an online, automatic and free plagiarism checker. Choose MS Word in the formats (.doc/ .docx) or HTML in the formats (.htm) or text (.txt) or text document (max. 300kB, 1000 words). With "Start Analysis" the source search begins. You will be updated about the progress continuously, search takes about 1 minute per document.
Plagiarism Detector Plagiarism Detector is a software especially designed keeping the growing content requirement over the internet in mind. Equally useful for teachers, students and website owners. It scans the documents and detects plagiarism and provides an instant report. Your content should not be in a specific format. You simply need to copy/paste your content in the provided window and press search button. This is it!

Monday, March 3, 2014

How to Detect Plagiarism

1. TurnItIn

Four UC Berkeley graduate students designed a peer review application to use for their classes — thus, TurnItIn was born. Eventually, that prototype developed into one of the most recognizable names in plagiarism detection.
TurnItIn, which processed over 60 million academic papers in 2011, is accessible for a fee per educator. Free quotes are available on the website.
Students can use TurnItIn's WriteCheck service to maintain proper citations and to access various writing tools. Teachers can ask students to submit their papers through the service as a first measure.
2. iThenticate

Like TurnItIn, iThenticate is a service offered by Plagiarism.org, but is geared more toward professional writing and scholarly research. Publishers like Oxford University Press use iThenticate for its Cross Check software, which includes a database of more than 31 million articles and 67,664 books and journals.
3. Viper

Viper calls itself the "Free TurnItIn Alternative." It scans a large database of academic essays and other online sources, offering side-by-side comparisons for plagiarism.
Note: Viper is available for Microsoft Windows users only.
4. PlagiarismChecker.com

PlagiarismChecker.com makes it simple for educators to check for copied work by pasting phrases from a student's paper into a search box. The system can search through either Google or Yahoo.
Users can also use the "Author" option to check if others have plagiarized their work online.
5. Plagiarism Detect

Plagiarism Detect scans text at a rate of $0.50 per page. The system takes about 5-7 minutes per page, which makes for thorough examination.
According to the website, Plagiarism Detect has recently updated its system with a new advanced algorithm, combining multi-layered technology and SMART scanning (which supposedly scans papers like humans).
6. University of Maryland Dustball Plagiarism Checker

Brian Klug created this plagiarism checker in 2002 as a student at the University of Maryland at College Park. The easy-to-use system allows users to paste entire papers into a search box.
A premium version, for a subscription fee of $8, claims to increase the accuracy of the scan, and allows users to upload Microsoft Word documents.
7. Plagiarisma.net

Plagiarisma has a search box as well as a software download available for Windows. Users can also search for entire URLs and files in HTML, DOC, DOCX, RTF, TXT, ODT and PDF formats.
8. PlagiarismSoftware.net (formerly Duplichecker)

This minimalistic checker lets users search for text and upload TXT files.
9. CheckForPlagiarism.net

CheckForPlagiarism.net claims its licensing fees are, on average, between 35% and 70% lower than competing services. Its basic account, meant for high school students, costs $20 and allows users to scan five documents.
The service can scan multiple languages, and users can compare papers.
10. EVE2: Essay Verification Engine

The EVE plagiarism detection system is one of the older services on this list, having performed almost 150 million scans since its creation in 2000. It runs users $29.99 for unlimited use and includes a 10-day money-back guarantee.
The website showcases several testimonials, including good reviews from Rolling Stone and Salon.