plagiarism checker

plagiarism checker

The Importance of Plagiarism Checkers

1. Introduction

Students would often leave assignments to the last minute, and that would force them to take the easy way out and just copy and paste information. This is very detrimental to the student as copying a whole page or more would result in a very bad reprimand, and a mark of unoriginal work may result in the fail of an assignment. A fail mark on an assignment is very damaging to a student’s self-esteem and academic future.

Students are very vulnerable as they would just copy anything that they are researching online and would attempt to rewrite it later. This would still be considered as unoriginal work as the sequence of sentences would remain the same as well as the structure. The only way to completely understand the information is to close the book and write it back in your own words.

Plagiarism is a serious offense as a person’s work is his/her intellectual property, and to use someone else’s work and not attribute it to the owner is just like stealing.

Plagiarism checker is an important tool for students, teachers, scholars, and professional writers/plagiarists. This tool has created more sophisticated ways in detecting the usage of unoriginal content. With the development of the internet and computer software, students have more ways to cheat, and society has become more vulnerable to unoriginal content. Students often unknowingly commit plagiarism, and professionals may do it as well to steal information. It is important to have a plagiarism checker before they submit their work onto the internet so that they can avoid the trap of a potential lawsuit.

2. Benefits of Plagiarism Checkers

The benefits are numerous. Most obviously, it will save you time. Rather than spending endless hours on looking up various pieces of information to see if they’re plagiarized, it will automatically highlight content that has been taken from elsewhere. With a vast database of material that has been procured from various sources in academia and the internet, the checker will provide a much more efficient alternative to traditional methods of identifying plagiarism. A further benefit is that this will allow for a peace of mind when creating written content. Whereas in the past, a writer may have been unaware as to whether information is truly their own or not, the plagiarism checker provides a definitive guarantee that any material that is flagged is not unique. For content such as essays or journal articles which require an extensive amount of research, this is no doubt a valuable tool. This brings me to the most important reason for the importance of plagiarism checkers. When writing, any body of work usually starts with an idea. Before putting that idea into your own words, it’s tempting to ‘cut and paste’ information from an existing article. This is not necessarily done with intention of cheating, but it’s often easy to forget and can be misleading to the reader and to oneself if the information is forgotten as being someone else’s. By using a plagiarism checker on a regular basis, one can avoid any instances of unintentional plagiarism which can still have a negative impact on the credibility of the written work. A final benefit is that the fact that these checkers are available online means that any written content can be checked for copied material at any time. A simple copy and paste is all it takes to provide a confidence in the originality of the work. Many of these benefits are reflected in a study conducted by JISC, an independent education expert. The study surveyed 1200 students and found that 80% believed plagiarism to be a problem in today’s society with many admitting to doing it. The participants felt that developing their skills in a particular area, applying their knowledge and providing evidence of their learning were the best forms of demonstrating their capabilities. They also claimed that they wanted to be recognised for their work without unfair accusations from others. With plagiarism often jeopardising these desires, the importance of plagiarism checkers has never been so high.

3. How Plagiarism Checkers Work

So, how do checkers check for plagiarism? Through the use of mainly two types of detection methods: the first being Text Reconstruction, which the software will extract the text to be checked and compare it to large indexes of words, documents, and the internet, trying to identify identical or similar statements of text. This is effective in searching for blatant plagiarism. The other method is Auto Coding Inverse documents; this is a statistical technique used to code two documents into a response pattern matrix and compare them to one another. The second document is then tested for similarity past its original and previous tests. This method is effective in checking for intelligent plagiarism and more sophisticated methods of “changing” the original source to get away from plagiarism.

Plagiarism checkers are a really important tool for teachers, students, professionals, website owners, and content writers. A good plagiarism checker should have a compare feature where you can see the documents side by side in various formats. This can be really important for writers as it appears to be common to accidentally write sentences or paragraphs very similar to the original, often occurring in first language speakers using materials written by non-native speakers. So, you will get flagged for accidental plagiarism and copyright infringement. It would be important to fix the issue as a writer, as the work may not be authentic with the previous writer proving the accusation of plagiarism right in his work. The sentence or paragraph that is flagged is highlighted in its specific part of the document, making it easier to identify and change. You can also see where the original source is from by clicking on the flagged area, where a small link will direct to the source.

4. Choosing the Right Plagiarism Checker

The following are some questions you should ask before you choose a plagiarism checker: Who is behind the software? Plagiarism detection software is a serious business, and you will want to choose a service which has a great deal of experience in the field. You are looking for a company that has been around for a while and has a good track record. A company where the people behind the service are not afraid to show themselves and are proud of the product often makes for higher quality software. How does the plagiarism checker create its database? The bigger the plagiarism database, the better, or at least that’s what you would think. Actually, not always. A very large database can actually hinder the service’s ability to detect plagiarism. Let’s say that a tutor uploads a paper through a plagiarism checker he has written for his students. He copies a section of the book and pastes it into various sections of the paper in an attempt to see if the plagiarism checker is robust enough to detect the cheating. Since the book segment is scattered throughout various parts of the paper, the self-plagiarizing tutor could mistakenly think he has done nothing wrong. The checker can also detect this and come up with a false negative. This is only a small example, and it would take too long to explain, but the point is that a manually created database is better.

5. Conclusion

Another drive behind tighter plagiarism detection is the dire consequences that can result from academic dishonesty. When a student is faced with an academic sanction, it may stay with them forever. It is not uncommon for an academic dishonesty notation to be expounded upon a student’s record, and in tougher cases, it has even led to expulsion. Ultimately, the students are the ones who suffer the most from an act of dishonesty and the consequences. It is then in the students’ best interest that they be aware of when they are crossing the line. A plagiarism checker can be a means of actuation, instilling the fear of getting caught in a student, yet providing the guidance students need to make it through their academic odes with the character-building experience of doing their own work.

In the wake of the potential disaster a plagiarized document can cause, there has never been a better time for a plagiarism checker. Given the vast amount of information produced each day and the upcoming rise in dishonesty, a means to enforce originality has never been more crucial. Students of all levels can make use of a plagiarism checker to ensure the originality of their work, and faculty can use the same technology to ascertain the legitimacy of student work. Not only can plagiarism detection software serve as a deterrent to those who are tempted to plagiarize, but it can also be a tool schools can use to educate students about the importance of attributing sources and the proper way to write research papers.

We all are part of the academic community, with a shared understanding that education and knowledge are the basis of our future development. Whether at school, college, or university, a practical demonstration of our learning and skills is assessed by the quality of our work. Plagiarism is a serious cause for concern in academia among students and faculty members alike. The way academic abstracts and ideas are being replicated, there is an increased risk of unoriginal content tarnishing the reputation of the actual author. Nowadays, students are resorting to less honest means of meeting academic requirements with greater frequency.