Relevancy of Free Online Software and Websites in Detection of Plagiarism

  • Himel Mondal Department of Physiology, MKCG Medical College, Ganjam, Odisha, India.
  • Shaikat Mondal Department of Physiology, Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Keywords: Article screening, citation, duplicate content, online plagiarism, paraphrase

Abstract

Background and Aim: Plagiarism is disgraceful to authors and opposed in the scientific community. Before submitting articles to journals, authors should check whether the article is unintentionally plagiarized or not. However, online premium plagiarism checking service may not be accessible to many authors. For those authors, there are many websites which offer plagiarism detection service free of cost. The aim of the study was to assess the efficacy of those websites in the detection of plagiarism. Methods: A paragraph of text with 2 verbatim plagiarized sentences, 2 inadequately paraphrased sentences, and 2 perceived unique sentences was used as a tool. This paragraph was checked for plagiarism in 23 popular websites. Results showed by websites were recorded and analyzed. Chi‑square test with α = 0.05 was used to compare the proportion of websites. Results: Among 23 websites, only 4 websites (17.39%) detected plagiarism above the expected level. Thirteen (56.52%) websites showed result of 0% plagiarism for the paragraph. Verbatim plagiarism was detected by 6 websites (26.09%) where only 1 website could detect inadequate paraphrasing. Conclusion: The majority of websites offering free plagiarism checking service failed to detect plagiarized content effectively. The level of detected plagiarism differs in the different website for same content. Hence, checking the manuscript in multiple websites would provide relatively better screening result for plagiarism.

Published
2017-03-31
How to Cite
Mondal, H., & Mondal, S. (2017). Relevancy of Free Online Software and Websites in Detection of Plagiarism. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Physiology, 4(3), 139-141. Retrieved from https://ijcep.org/index.php/ijcep/article/view/193