How To Avoid Accidental Plagiarism

Originally published on Yahoo Voices with the title 'Are Free Plagiarism Checkers Worth Using?'

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All the Internet publishing sites I've come across have a zero tolerance policy for plagiarism. That's what triggered my search for plagiarism detecting programs. This article focuses on free on line plagiarism checkers. It is also intended to make people aware of how easy it is to accidentally commit plagiarism without having any knowledge of having done so.

Why should a contributor be interested in the on line plagiarism checkers? Here are two examples that justify the search in my mind.

There is many old songs, prayers and poems named "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep." Some people may assume that these are in the public domain because they were written long ago. But a simple search on the Internet verifies that at least one version may be protected by copyright. That version exists in the New England Primer.

http://neprimer.com/

The same situation exists with any classic novel. Though the novel may have been public domain at one time, one might want to check a recently published edition of the novel to see if it is still in the public domain. I prefer the safe route and follow any quote with information about the book as well as the title and the author.

Many sites claim their on line checkers are free, but once you register with the site, you find out that they mean a free trial period. I considered the use a free online plagiarism checker to check my content before I submit it for publication.

The simplest free on line plagiarism checker is at

http://www.articlechecker.com/

It simply tells you whether plagiarism exists within your article. It uses two search engines Google and Yahoo.

The second free on line plagiarism checker I tried is

http://www.duplichecker.com/

This plagiarism checker gives the user a sentence by sentence analysis and reveals which sentences are exact duplicates of sentences in other articles or blogs. You can select one of three search engines: Google, Yahoo or MSN. You can also choose whether you want to test quotes or general text. If you choose classic check, you will find a detailed search for like phrases and sentences in other articles.

The third free on line plagiarism checker I tried was

http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/

It analyses text segments and reports whether they are okay or not. Apparently, it does not check every sentence in your article.

In my opinion, duplichecker is the best of the three free plagiarism checkers. One important note. None of the free plagiarism checkers I've come across check for paraphrasing. The only hint you'll receive is a url that appears numnerous times in the results of the plagiarism checker.

I would recommend purchasing a plagiarism checker if they were not so expensive. The prices for using a plagiarism checker is $8 a month and up. I've seen shareware for as little as $50 but I wouldn't recomend shareware nor freeware because there is no gaurantee concerning the thoroughness of the search. Some of them only use one search engine. I don't think that is adequate.

If you can't afford a plagiarism checker service or you can't justify the cost based on your income from writing, then the free on line plagiarism checkers are better than nothing.

Most importantly, after you have written an article, review your resources to ensure that you did not accidentally commit plagiarism.