Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

Online plagiarism checker

.ACS.

Has anyone ever used any of these? What are they like?

I've found http://www.scanmyessay.com/
Is it any good?

Does any have any other recommendations?

Reply 1

TheatreLovely

I've used writecheck by turntin and it was really quick and easy to use. The only issue I have with it is that you can't tell the software to ignore footnotes so mine came up as 4% due to the book titles and names of authors matching things, when of course I hadn't plagiarised them.

But other than that, it's really good and worth the money.

Reply 2

Waterstorm

I think I read somewhere that viper wasn't very good compared to others like turnitin. My uni actually uses turnitin themselves, but writecheck is meant to be pretty good.

Reply 3

.ACS.

Thanks for the comments so far.

Yeah, my university also uses TurnItIn. I'm tempted to use WriteCheck since it checks against the same databases that TurnItIn use, hence it will be more applicable for me.

I just have a nagging feeling that if I do use one of them, it will somehow get into the database and then will be flagged up when I finally submit the piece.

Reply 4

Becca-Sarah

TurnItIn has a draft option so you can submit it twice and it knows not to check your second submission against your first. I think it was through the same process as when you hand work in, so it possibly needs your uni to switch that option on for that piece of work...

Reply 5

Waterstorm

If you look on writecheck, it says they don't store the work on their database so it wouldn't show up when you submit it. I've tried it before, and I know other people in my uni have too - cause I found out about it from seeing someone else using it in the library once - and I haven't had any problems of it coming up when giving in the final submission.

Reply 6

BigVitaminD

My university has a hidden setting that allows you to submit your work on turnitin to check the level of plagiarism. It doesn't submit it formally, just checks and gives you the result.

Check your uni for this. It's really buried at my uni, I doubt anyone knows about it.

Reply 7

Waterstorm

Original post by BigVitaminD

That's true for mine as well actually. And I know for a fact not many people know about it. And it's actually better than writecheck cause it shows the links to where there might have been copied work, which most of the time is silly stuff like common phrases etc.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 8

River85

Original post by .ACS.

I just have a nagging feeling that if I do use one of them, it will somehow get into the database and then will be flagged up when I finally submit the piece.

Just in case, I used Viper with two essays already submitted and my dissertation (which isn't to be submitted electronically via Turnitin, apparently). Came back between 3 - 8% plaigarism report (titles and authors in the bibliography).

I suspect Viper is quite poor compared to WriteCheck and Turnitin. After editing the essay a bit in order to purposefully plagiarise, it didn't pick up on one section (which is from a reasonbly well known book).

Reply 9

.ACS.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I guess in that case I'll use WriteCheck. It seems like it's the best, and it checks against the same database my university uses, so it would make sense. Plus if they don't add my submission to the TurnItIn database, then that's even better.

Reply 10

zhkoll

I don't really trust the TurnItIn policies. Their way to profit is to gather as many documents as possible. I like it better, if 'official' databases are used, such as the search index of the great search enginges. I used plagscan and was surprised how many sources I used were online, too.

Reply 11

MusicTechnologyStudent

Why would anyone need to plagiarism check their written work? If it's all your own original work the probability of there being a sizeable match to any known source is surely quite small.