Many free and chargeable Anti-Plagiarism software are available and used to detect plagiarism in the manuscripts of the submitted articles. Depending on the percentage of detected plagiarism, decision of instant rejection of submitted articles is taken by some journal authorities.
But questions may be raised
1.If a writer of an article (with weak knowledge in English) keep the copied text unchanged and refer the author of the consulted article/s, on which logic it can be considered as plagiarism?
2.If some intelligent “Copy-Paste” article writer collect data of 2-3 alike good research papers and increase 2-3% of some of them and decrease another some of such data before performing analysis of that manufactured data by using some analysing software (like SPSS) and then write a paper on that data, can it be detected by any anti-plagiarism software?
3. If the language of the copied portion is totally changed by any person with good knowledge in English, can it be detected?
4. During online checking of plagiarism, the article is exposed. In the present era of over 90% deep web or dark web activities, such idea may be collected and used by others. Where is the safety?
In my personal opinion, free-software-checkers for plagiarism are not trustable nor faithful. So, I raised this issue as a discussion thread as this portal:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_free-software-checkers_for_plagiarism_trustable_and_faithful
Conditional YES, really I am always depending on my own writing style and expressing ideas or references content by my phrases and expression, so that makes me away from plagiarism, or with about 4% maximum plagiarism.
Thank you very much my friend for asking this important question.
Regards,
Emad
To some extent! For example:
Turnitin software cannot identify incidents of plagiarism. Nor can it prove that a student has not plagiarized. It can only create Originality reports that show the degree of similarity between a submitted assignment and sources of content within the database.
Human reasons are to be applied to the tool performance to make a judgement.
Dear Prof Shibabrata Pattanayak Sir, your queries are quite practical. Let's see what do the anti-plagiarism experts tell about the solutions.
I am not sure about this. Just recently a friend of mine received an email from a journal saying that his work had more than 20% plagiarism. Even my own name and the references being considered plagiarism!. Maybe in arts, but for sciences, this is impractical. In addition, nowadays, serious journals use scopus, ORCID and researcher IDs to check the publication history of authors before making any decisions.
Very nice and current discussion dear Shibabrata Pattanayak . Yes it’s difficult to draw a definite line in between authenticity and plagiarism. That’s why plagiarism softwares gives ratios and %10-15 ratio would generally be acceptable for most academic journals. In some instances, those softwares includes the references section which does not make a sense. References sections should be excluded whilst interrogating the manuscripts. For non-English speaker authors, to get help from language polishing reliable companies would be recommended ( beware like predatory journals, there are predatory language companies which they are not only asking sky high prices but also offers unrealistic promises)
Please go through the following RG link.
Article The use and analysis of anti-plagiarism software: Turnitin t...
Yes, of course, because it is a global database and not just a program
I use Turnitin and never had safety issues. But I have no answer to your questions. I think it is much easier to create your own text than to put so much effort into trying to cheat on antiplagiarism software, not to mention ethics.
Do not equate plagiarism with similarity. You cannot make someone guilty of plagiarism simply because the anti-plagiarism software identified a few consecutive words identical to someone else's writing. When writing an essay or similar works, one can set the software to ignore small matches coming under “common knowledge”. If you do not enable this setting, you may observe many small text matches of very general information. Small matches commonly occur when you use specific terms with long names (e.g., ‘person with physical abilities’ (4 words), ‘all students, teachers, and parents’ (5 words), ‘International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)’(9 words), etc.)
To safeguard inadvertent similarities including small matches, some limits are prescribed for exclusion universally. In India, the UGC prescribes exclusion of the following from similarity checks.
- Information put in quotations with necessary permission or attribution
- References or bibliography, table of contents, preface, and acknowledgements
- Generic terms, laws, standard symbols, and standards equations
- Common knowledge or coincidental terms consisting of less than 14 consecutive words (This differs between countries. For English speaking countries, it is generally 9 or even less)
If you set the software to exclude small match cases below 14 words, every match the software finds to be less than 14 words would automatically be excluded from the report.
A word of caution: All the above kinds of maneuverability are possible with commercial antiplagiarism software such as TurnItIn or Ithenticate only. Finally, remember that all cases of plagiarism cannot be detected through a plagiarism detection tool as they detect only similarities!
Dear Colleagues,
Please try to answer the questions raised aginst ANTI PLAGIARISM SOFTWARE, as such questions are raised by some researchers (both senior and jounior researchers).
So, it is very important to find out answers of the raised questions.
Regards,
I think that is verry interesting idea to improve these software, tools to detect plagia should focus on plagiarism concept and not on similarity between words in sentences.
Authors are currently request the revision of native speaker in english to better resolve this problem
The problem is that plagiarism software detect by default the plgia made on definition and universal description which are currently used by author....so this is not logical...
Of course, the “author”, who has made significant efforts to “rewrite” someone else's work, can drastically reduce the “borrowing percentage”. A good knowledge of the principles of operation of anti-plagiarism systems will make it possible the doubtful text to “pass through”. I can imagine a program that generates a certain coherent text based on "alien originals". But anti-plagiarism programs are also being improved. It is like a rivalry between offensive and defensive weapons. Just as the rivalry between software viruses and anti-viruses program continues for many years, also well known strugle against doping in sport. Therefore, in my opinion, a single case of plagiarism should be punished very harshly (for example, by including the name of the "author" in black lists, without "Therapeutic Use Exemption").
Once lied, who will believe you (K. Prutkov, 1854)?
Never used any Anti-Plagiarism software. It was simply not there in 1970's and 1980's. We did write sometimes up to 20 /25 draft of the paper. Everytime my research supervisor used to ask 'Is this the best you can do?' Then I used to go back to the draft and rewrite. Kept on polishing and polishing till the final product emerged.
The anti-plagiarism software, especially, Ithenticate and Turnitin are the best ones and they are really useful for the researchers in getting the best assessment on plagiarism.
I had once placed a draft of a paper in a web-archive. Later, I was considering submitting to a journal that required a plagiarism report. The free online plagiarism software that was recommended apparently detected the archived draft and scored me at over 96% unoriginal. That was my only experience with anti-plagiarism software, so I have a related worry that may reflect my ignorance. Analytical papers in the humanities often make use of extensive direct quotation, including long block quotations (my paper also did that). Is any software able to tell whether such quotation has been properly referenced?
Dear Dr. Karl Pfeifer ,
It is definitely a problem. If properly referred, then why the same words of any referred article used in a new article should be considered as unethical?
There is another Plagiarism Checking software named "URKUND" which offers an options to agree or disagree with the similarity check report. While generating the Report, the Author may choose to agree or disagree with the similarity detected by the software. Accordingly, the software will report the percentage (%) similarity.
Citing the authors' name and page without paraphrasing is plagiarism.
Electronic detection through the use of software is not 100% effective. Hence, raising researchers' awareness of academic integrity is better than using plagiarism detection software.
Turnitin or iThenticate or any other similar software can not be anti-plagiarism; it shows the degree of similarity between a submitted article and other articles published. These softwares are useful but they don not cover all types of journals with all languages.
No doubt about its safety and effectiveness. It is to remember, it is effective only against the sources which are available on the internet. But if you copy from the sources which are not available on the internet, anti-plagiarism software is ineffective.
The plagiarism softwares gives the similarities of articles in its percentage, which are effective to some extent as they can only check the materials available online.
1. Anything which is directly copied as it is, is considered as plagiarism even though proper citation/referencing is done.
2. For this query, as per my knowledge, anti-plagiarism software cannot detect this. But, editor of any reputed journal will surely ask to submit supporting documents for data collection because of which such intelligent people will end up in trouble.
3. No. It cant be detected. This is called as paraphrasing. But most ethical way of doing paraphrasing is giving proper citation.
4. Yes. Safety is a major concern. Here most apt example is problem faced by Karl Pfeifer of saving a draft paper is web archive. Even I am looking forward for solution of this problem.
Shibabrata Pattanayak sir
There is no software which check plagiarism only similarity level can be checked. Free softwares are not giving accurate similarity index .
if you want to publish your article in any good journal scopus/scie then use turnitin/ Ithenticate as both are best the option.
The description of popular similarity checking softwares are given below.
Urkund is a web-based application that conducts server-side plagiarism detection. The solution to detect plagiarism is integrated and automated. This is a paid service that utilizes a standard email program to upload documentation and display information. This program handles 300 separate types of submissions and checks all accessible online sources. The educational sources of documents are given more priority while searching.UGC provides this software to universities of india for similarity checking.
Ithenticate for any text document is an effective tool for web-based plagiarism detection. Installation on a client computer is not necessary. Input materials are comparable with the references accessible on the site in this case. Many well-known journal publishers utilize this well-known method. It is a professional fast plagiarism checker that is easy to use. This is meant for institutional use instead of personal use, but essentially this offers a restricting feature for consumers of the specific identification of plagiarism, such as students of master and doctoral education. this allows them to check a document of up to 25,000 words.
Turnitin is a successful web-based tool. Detection and reporting is done remotely in this method. 15,000 universities and 30 Million students have now approved Turnitin because of its user-friendly design, broad repository help, robust plagiarism tests and structured report production. It can be seen as one of the best plagiarism checker.
Arun kumar sharma
In my personal opinion, free-software-checkers for plagiarism are not trustable nor faithful. So, I raised this issue as a discussion thread as this portal:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_free-software-checkers_for_plagiarism_trustable_and_faithful
Some many Plagiarism checker exist that are reliable.
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