Is anyone familiar with a good online plagiarism checker?
TurnItIn works well. It compares submissions to multiple databases of previous paper submissions, websites (Wikipedia), etc.
The better plagiarism detection services, like TurnItIn and SafeAssign, cost money. Many schools or educational departments in the USA purchase site licenses for teacher use.
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Honestly, if I’m suspicious about something in a paper, I just run a check through Google. That does mean that I might miss some things, but it works well enough as a quick check.
I have serious issues with services like TurnItIn. Though students technically retain the rights to their intellectual property, they often have no choice about whether to submit their work using TurnItIn (or SafeAssign, if that’s what’s in use at their school). TurnItIn then adds that work to the database that they check papers against; it’s that very database they use to make money.
Uncompensated student labor being used to generate income for a corporation doesn’t sit well with me.
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