From the academic world’s perspective, one of the worst things that a researcher can do is pass off someone else’s work as their own. Plagiarism, both intentional and accidental, has serious consequences, since it violates the academic field’s ethical principles. No matter how good the results of your study might be, they will never see the light of day if you commit this one mistake.
Fortunately, students and researchers now have access to many free online plagiarism checkers. These websites give users a detailed report of where they may have plagiarised ideas from other sources, allowing them to resolve that specific part before submitting their paper. Some even have tools that determine how much of a research paper was plagiarised or improperly cited.
It is undoubtedly helpful to use an online plagiarism checker when fine-tuning your research paper, but just how accurate are these tools?
In this article, we will go through several of the most popular free online plagiarism checkers. Besides discussing their accuracy, we will also look into their user interface and how they deliver their reports.
Are Online Plagiarism Checkers Accurate?
There are many online plagiarism checkers available on the Internet, but not all are accurate and reliable. We compiled a list of the most popular websites and went through the following sections (when applicable): Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Frequently Asked Questions, Disclaimers, and Support Forums. We also took into consideration reviews from online users to determine the accuracy of each online plagiarism checker.
With that said, here are the results:
| Website | Is it Accurate? | |
| Duplichecker |
|
|
| Small SEO Tools |
|
|
| Academic Plagiarism |
|
|
| PlagTracker |
|
|
Each website above boasts of having a slew of powerful anti-plagiarism tools and features. Still, it is important to remember that there is no way to independently check whether they genuinely run inputted content against “billions of web pages.” Thus, users should take their claims with a grain of salt.
As appealing as these anti-plagiarism features and tools are, a comparative study conducted by the website EssayScam.org determined that using free online plagiarism checkers is risky, due to privacy and intellectual property concerns.
Their research found that 25% of such websites save inputted content in their own commercial databases. A further 13% of free online plagiarism checkers also admitted using content submitted by users for their own commercial or non-commercial purposes. Moreover, 25% of these websites are in countries notorious for weak legal protections, which means that weak legislation governs them against international copyright violations and intellectual theft.
Besides questionable copyright protections, free online plagiarism checkers are also not as accurate as they claim, because they only compare inputted content against a limited number of sources. “Billions of web pages” may sound legitimate; however, academics use many other sources besides the Internet during their research. For example, print sources, like books and newspaper archives, are likely not readily available online.
These disadvantages do not necessarily mean that free online plagiarism checkers are worthless. Students and researchers should still use them when fine-tuning their papers; however, they should keep in mind that the website they are using is far from foolproof.
Flowcite Guarantees That Your Research Papers are Plagiarism-Free
Given their limitations, no free online plagiarism checker can guarantee that your research paper is a hundred percent free of plagiarism. The fact is, there is no “best plagiarism checker” that is available without cost. It takes a lot of research and program development, which is why you should consider including this service in your study budget.
So, if you want to get the best available research writing services, you should consider investing in Flowcite.
Flowcite is an online platform that boasts integrated proofreading services and a powerful similarity checker, powered by Unicheck. Our similarity checker analyses your text for similarities by comparing your document with external sources, like billions of unique web pages, in real-time.
An all-in-one citation manager that provides researchers with a seamless and consistent way to reference their sources further minimises the risk of plagiarism. Not only does this tool generate citations quickly, accurately, and in a perfect format, but it also allows for tagging and notes to categorise each one easily.
Besides these, Flowcite also allows researchers to generate bibliographies in over 7,000 different citation styles, from APA and MLA to Chicago and more. Without a doubt, this eliminates the time-consuming task of referencing and formatting, enabling them to put all their focus on their work.
In the simplest of terms, Flowcite has everything that students and researchers need to create ready-to-publish papers. Their end-to-end academic writing services have streamlined every stage of the research and writing process with helpful features like:
- An AI-driven summariser tool that allows researchers to evaluate relevant references within minutes, no matter how long they are
- Comment, share, and edit tools that allow for real-time collaboration among research team members
- Integrated proofreading, peer review, and publishing services to ensure that research papers comply with standard publication rules
With Flowcite, researchers can concentrate on communicating their ideas rather than waste time on the pesky administrative tasks of the research process.
Sign up for Flowcite today to get started on a seamless, stress-free research writing process!
Content Marketing Strategist
Brittany is a Content Marketing Strategist at Flowcite, and an outstanding academic writing expert. She holds a first-class Honours degree in Literae Humaniores from the University of Oxford and has been certified in Digital Marketing Analytics by the MIT Sloan School of Management.
