Verdict: Despite its simple, unfussy design and the offer of producing “fast and free’ reports, the website simply doesn’t work.
Free plagiarism checker review: www.searchenginereports.net/articlecheck.aspx | |
| What are the subscription options? e.g. free, paid only, paid and freeIf paid options, what length of subscription/price structure is offered? | Free online checker. |
| Maximum word count? (if any) | No maximum. |
| Resubmissions allowed? If so, is this limited? | Unlimited checks. |
| Type of scanner E.g. software download, copy and paste, upload document online. Say if multiple options are offered. | Two options offered: “Copy and paste’ online scanner; File uploader. |
| Sources checked E.g. internet, any specific journal databases mentioned, any electronic book databases such as Google docs mentioned, past submissions from other students etc | Website – no words altered; Website – some words removed; Website – some words changed; Website – fully paraphrased; Online pdf;Electronic book. |
| File types supported E.g. doc, docx, rtf, open office, pdfs, ppts | Only text (.txt) files can be uploaded. |
| Extra features? E.g. grammar checker, spelling checker | Offers facility for checking for plagiarism on webpages by entering the website’s URL. |
| Support offered? E.g. phone, email etc | No support is offered other than an FAQ page. |
| Report / results | |
| Type of report Downloadable? Shareable? | Reports are produced – but see general observations. |
| Side by side comparison to plagiarism? | No. |
| Accuracy of results – w hich sections were detected and which were not (make sure the correct source is identified) | |
| Basic plagiarism – copied and pasted from a website source | Not detected: unable to test – “there was an error processing the request” |
| Basic plagiarism – copied and pasted from an online pdf | Not detected: unable to test – “there was an error processing the request” |
| Some words removed – copied and pasted from a website source | Not detected: unable to test – “there was an error processing the request” |
| Some words changed – copied and pasted from a website source | Not detected: unable to test – “there was an error processing the request” |
| Full paraphrasing – copied and pasted from a website source | Not detected: unable to test – “there was an error processing the request” |
| Basic plagiarism – copied and pasted from an electronic book | Not detected: unable to test – “there was an error processing the request” |
| General observations – e ase of use, overall experience. If other features were included (e.g. spelling, grammar check), how easy were they to use and how useful were they? | |
| Searchenginereport.net’s website is more visually pleasing than a lot of the plagiarism detector websites that contain so much information they can be overwhelming at first sight. It provides short, clear instructions down the left hand side of the page and two options are offered for checking for plagiarised material; a “cut and paste’ scanner and a document upload facility; however, the upload facility will only allow you to upload text (.txt) files, so word documents either have to be converted or their contents pasted into a notepad document. In addition, there’s also a facility to scan for plagiarism on websites by entering the website’s URL into its scanner.Despite its simple, unfussy design and the offer of producing “fast and free’ reports, the website simply doesn’t work. Six test documents were copied and pasted into the scanner but on each occasion the website produced an error message. The six test documents were also converted into text documents and uploaded but, again, the website produced an error message. This process was repeated again over a week on two other PCs, running different versions of windows and internet explorer, and using different internet connections, but in every scenario the webpage reported an error. No online support is offered, nor is any contact information provided, although the FAQ tellingly features the questions, “why was your tool broken for so long?” and “things we are working on” (pedants like myself will note, however, that the latter is not a question). Either way, the FAQs provide no insight as to why it is currently not working, or when it will be working again, if ever. The name of the website, searchenginereports.net, indicates that the scanner and upload facility works by comparing the material submitted with all indexed documents on the internet. In general, these methods are capable of identifying large amounts of plagiarised work if plagiarised material has been indexed by the search engines; however, they don’t always detect plagiarised texts where some words have been changed and they never identify work which has been paraphrased so, even if it were possible to test this scanner, by its nature it is likely to contain significant drawbacks. | |
