Posted on February 21, 2018
We decided to study three important questions:
For each of the websites, we checked such sections as Disclaimers, Terms of Service, FAQ, Support Forums, Privacy Policy, and Warnings.
We searched for information on licensing, use of submitted content, data protection, service location and governing laws, and liability limitations.
We also compared the information on country location available on the website and information from the WHOIS database. We even visited professional forums and social media to confirm some data on the location of the service.
According to results of our research, 25% of online plagiarism checkers save submitted content. 28% of such websites claim that they don’t save the content, and for 44% it’s impossible to determine whether or not they save the content.
13% of websites admit that they use the submitted content for their own purposes (either commercial or non-commercial). For 54%, it’s impossible to determine whether they use the content or not. 31% of websites claim that they don’t use the saved content.
34% of the websites are located in countries with proper laws regarding intellectual theft and copyright (USA, Germany, Australia, Hong-Kong, UK, Cyprus). 25% of the services are located in countries with weak legal protection (Ukraine, Pakistan, Russia). For 41% of the websites, we were unable to determine the location.
Many students, bloggers, teachers, and writers use online plagiarism services every day. According to the results of our research, the use of such services sometimes is very risky, because the submitted content can be unprotected against copyright violations. Most of the ‘free’ online services don’t provide users with clear information on what they do with the submitted content, and how they use it. Some services publish the submitted content as their own and use it in any way they want.
However, such services want a stream of fresh content for a reason. They don’t have many sources to determine whether or not a certain text is original. Thus, some complicated services use the submitted content to improve the effectiveness of their work. At the same time, such a use of the content creates an opportunity to steal the content.
The Privacy Policies and the Terms of Use may be changed anytime, so users cannot rely on claims of such websites.
The submitted content may be used for so-called ‘content spinning software’, which uses the original content to create many paraphrased copies of texts on the same topic. We can conclude that writers and students who use online plagiarism checkers risk giving their content to the content spinning software.
We suggest not using online plagiarism checking websites. You can copy and paste sentences from your text into a search box of any search engine, and it will work just like plagiarism checkers, or even better.
You may have heard that there is nothing new under the sun. However, almost all colleges, universities, and MBA schools want their students to write an original content that will have nothing in common with works written before. Plagiarism isn’t a new thing – even Shakespeare borrowed almost all his ideas from other sources, but the internet has raised plagiarism to a completely new level.
Professors don’t like when students steal their works from the internet. Given the large class sizes and fast pace of work, teachers don’t have much time to consider each student individually, trying to figure out whether he or she have plagiarized the work or not. Plagiarism checkers are a perfect solution in such conditions; they allow teachers to check many papers fast and easily.
Most plagiarism checkers compare texts to the available web pages, and already-uploaded texts (most teachers require all their students to use such online services). After that, plagiarism checkers provide users with an analysis of the content, taking into account the percentage of text that has been found in other sources.
Such a method includes many drawbacks. For example, students may use quotes from various sources. Even if all the citations are written according to necessary standards, plagiarism checkers will flag these elements as plagiarized. Thus, if students have analytical papers assigned, and their works include many quotes from Shakespeare or Dickens, they can be accused of plagiarizing the content, even if they followed all the quotation rules.
Another common problem related to the use of online plagiarism detectors is that many students use some common, trivial phrases, such as “it’s easier said than done”, “in the heat of the moment”, and so on. Of course, good academic writing implies avoiding such constructions, but the use of common phrases itself isn’t plagiarizing. At the same time, some students just change the wording without changing the content, and their texts may pass plagiarism check because such algorithms are unable to detect paraphrasing. Computers are able to consider words and phrases, but not the meaning of the text.
Plagiarism software also has its ethical side. Professors rely on online checkers instead of doing their job and checking all papers manually. Some students may not understand the concept of plagiarism. For example, why citing their textbook is considered plagiarism, while quotes from Shakespeare are not. Students from some foreign countries may even consider citing their professor as a form of respect. That’s why telling students what exactly is considered plagiarism, and providing them with examples is necessary.
Professors have to create an environment that will motivate students to avoid plagiarism. They have to spend more time with students, helping them with assignments and learning each student’s writing style. Understanding capabilities of each student, teachers will be able to easily understand whether or not their content was plagiarized.
Professors also have to figure out why certain texts are flagged as plagiarism and check if citations are written properly. Usually, common assignments produce more positive results, because students use citations from reliable sources and familiar ideas. Unique assignments are much more difficult for students because they are not sure where to find the information. Their citations may be formatted incorrect, which in turn, will cause a bad originality percentage for such a work.
Finally, another problem with plagiarism checkers is that they add certain tension between students and professors, minimizing the trust. When students hear long speeches about how their papers will be checked for plagiarism, it doesn’t motivate them to follow the honor code.
In our opinion, professors must remember that policing their students isn’t their main goal. Plagiarism checkers do their job, but they cannot solve such real problems as weak students’ skills and drawbacks of the educational system.
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