E-text

Research and Publication Ethics(RPE)

Module -5B
Software Tools

Contents

05B.0 Objectives

05B.1 Introduction

05B.2 Use of Plagiarism / Similarity Software Tools

05B.3 Types of Plagiarism / Similarity Software

05B.4 Open source Plagiarism Software

05B.5 Proprietary Plagiarism Software

05B.5.6 Conclusion

05B.0 Objectives

The objective of this unit is to obtain the basic ideas regarding

 To know about the plagiarism
 To know the Plagiarism software tools
 To know the types of Plagiarism Software
 To know the Open Source Plagiarism Software
 To know the Proprietary Plagiarism Software
 To know the Urkund Plagiarism Software, advantages of Urkund and features of
Urkund
 To know the Turnitin Plagiarism Software, features, modules, and the Authorship
Report of Turnitin

05B.1 Introduction

Plagiarism is an emerging issue for research publication. There are different views on
plagiarism and the plagiarism software and for the selection of assessing research publication
through plagiarism software. Plagiarism has been understand as “someone using someone
else’s intellectual product (such as copied textual parts, ideas, tables, results and images), and
denoting it as their own”. There is lack of awareness on assessing similarity checking through
plagiarism software is a serious problem in research publication in every sphere of research
publication. In the tutorial, plagiarism detection software has been discussed for how to use,
access, check the similarities, and get the exported report of similarities from plagiarism
software.
05B.2 Use of Plagiarism / Similarity Software Tools

Plagiarism is the unethical practice of using words or ideas (either planned or accidental) of
another author/researcher or personal previous works without proper acknowledgment in the
present paper. It is measured as a serious academic and intellectual offense; plagiarism can
result in highly negative impacts such as prohibition from journal systems and destruction on
author trustworthiness and reputation. As a creator one should avoid from all kinds of
plagiarism. Academic scholarly writer should go through the rectification process of similarity
checking tools. One can check and evaluated the scholarly communication through a standard
plagiarism / similarity checking tools (application) as per the nations or scholarly
communication channels guidelines for research integrity.

05B.3 Types of Plagiarism / Similarity Software

Textual plagiarism Software: Textual plagiarism software is the type of plagiarism checker
which can get textual information as input, and compares with the original textual information,
and gives output as text in the similarity report. The similarity report is in marking of the similar
with original or identical text, hyperlinks or other references of the sources which are matching
with the plagiarized documents and provides the overall similarity report.

Cross-Language Plagiarism Software: Cross-language plagiarism is the type of plagiarism

where the original and its copied information are in different languages. Cross language
plagiarism detection across various languages are in initial stages. iParadigms is a cross-
language application new module of Turnitin Suite. This application has been translated from
the Turnitin Suite English module to various languages. It is available to check plagiarized
material from English to other languages. The translation similarity checking service is
available only for the French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, and Turkish
versions of Turnitin. Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, and Romanian

Image Plagiarism Software: Image plagiarism is the type of plagiarism where one is copying
an image from a book or the internet without proper acknowledging the original images (or
obtaining permission of the original creator’s copyrighted image). This is simply an image theft
when someone copies ones images from the various web resources and it is used as own work
without asking any permission from original creator and without acknowledging or citing those
images. Reverse Image search is a technique to assist for finding matching images from the
web. Plaghunt, Google image search, Check for Plagiarism, etc. are the image plagiarism
checker using reverse image technique. In this reverse image search, one can check the
originality or similarity through these software, to upload a picture in these applications and
get similarity report within a few seconds. These kinds of software show the matching images
with colours and pixels of the images over the web. In this way one can check the image
similarities via image Plagiarism checker.

05B.4 Open source Plagiarism Software

There are some open source plagiarism or similarity checking web-based available as SaaS
services. All the similarity applications are visible in freemium versions. Universal academic
writers can use the free version with any authoritative control and get the similarity report
easily. In case of premium access, users need to subscribe the services which are integrated
with few renowned academic databases and with some additional features. Few freemium
plagiarism applications are as follows:-

05B.4.1 Copyscape

Copyscape is a web-based multilingual support Software as a Service (SaaS) plagiarism /

similarity checking service developed by Indigo Stream Technologies, Ltd. in 2004. It’s a
freemuium based application. Copyscape can be used as un-authoritative controlled evaluation
system. The web-based application can only check Google and Bing based internet resources.
Copyscape Premium have some extra features than the free version, this software use the
Google API. It can only integrate with WordPress and no others learning management system.

05B.4.2 Grammarly’s plagiarism checker

Grammarly’s plagiarism checker can evaluate the similarities from internet resources and
ProQuest’s academic databases. This web-based application is a part of robust academic
writing system which also enhances the writing skill through grammatical and spell checking
features. Grammarly is an artificial intelligence (AI) based writing assistant application.

05B.4.3 Small SEO Tools

UK based [Link] came into existence in 2010 and is a web-based free services of
academic content creation, writing, logos, posters, invitations, flyers, resume, image
processing, keyword research and analysis, backlink analysis, web resource management tools
and in-depth web analysis, website performance analysis, proxy server management tools,
domain analysis tools, meta tag analysis tools, Password Management Tools, online pdf
creation, web development and unit converter, binary converter, and also plagiarism checkers.
Small SEO Tools plagiarism checkers is a free un-authoritative cloud support similarity
checking application. It only checks from internet resources.

05B.4.4 PlagScan

PlagScan is another most popular freemium plagiarism / similarity checking web application
came into existence in 2009. It evaluates the similarities from web resources, privately shared
digital repository, user's own repository content with various accessible journals repositories
and its own Plagiarism Prevention Pool. This application uses Microsoft Bing as web content
crawler in backend to enhance searching web resources and concentrating on scientific and
academic information web contents. Only PlagScan uses Apache Solr as indexing tools and its
light API which integrate with most popular learning management systems. Only PlagScan
provides the absolute data privacy, security and copyright regulations of European data security
and privacy laws as per European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and German
Federal Data Protection Act, specifically the German Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (BDSG) data.
Academicians uploaded files in PlagScan, have not searchable in various search engines like
Google and others, files / data transmitted under encrypted security protocol, uploaded
documents in PlagScan never shared to anyone.
05B.4.5 Plagly

Plagly provides web-based freemium services on plagiarism or similarity detection, citation

management, content grammatical detection, multimedia evaluation, extension features in
Google Chrome and Firefox browsers. Plagly plagiarism checkers access based on AI.
Academician can get Plagly premium version access through subscription in addition some
special functionality.

05B.4.6 PlagTracker

PlagTracker is also multilingual web-based freemium similarities checking application. It also

supports grammatical correction, professional editing help. Academic writer can check
similarities 5000 words at a time in PlagTracker free version. In premium version, academician
can evaluate multiple large contents at a time with upload option in addition to extra features
like instant report, grammatical rectification, reference management, integration API with
other applications.

05B.5 Proprietary Plagiarism Software

A very few tested and nationwide academically accepted proprietary plagiarism / similarity
checking application are web visible. Some of are as follows: -

 Urkund
 Turnitin
 iThenticate

In this tutorial, only two applications namely Urkund and Turnitin have been discussed.

05B.5.1 Urkund

Urkund has been considered for similarity checking web-based application by Ministry of
Human Resources Development (MHRD) and jointly with UGC and INFLIBNET to provide
access of all the higher education institutions, and all universities in India.

More than 1000 universities across India have taken similarity checking services and around
35 million students have benefited till date.

Urkund have managed to enhance and enrich the quality and standard of research productivity
among researchers and scientists of overall higher education system. This web-based
application has been able to check the originality and protect the research integrity. This
similarity checking process helps researchers’ and scientists’ fraternity to motivate for
maintaining the ethics of research. This process also assists to ease of publishing of research
papers, and satisfaction of the credibility of researchers.

05B.5.1.1 Advantages of Urkund

 User friendly
 Precise and competent
  Consistent and extensive accessibility
 Data safety
 Customer care service
 Prevention and Promotion of academic integrity
 Access to the Plagiarism Prevention Pool (PPP)

05B.5.1.2 Features of Urkund

 Similarity checking of multilingual resources

 Seamless integration
 Metrics
 Access similarity checking from big subscription based publisher venders like
Springer, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, IEEE and Gale / Cengage as well as open
access resources
 Reducing false positive
 Comprehensive report

Users can be accessed through the three different ways.

1. Email registration
2. Access Urkund via integration with learning management system
3. Researchers can often upload content files to their professors ([Link])
intended to send large numbers (maximum limits) of documents at once or through e‐
mail client

Urkund web-based similarity checking application can be accessed through e‐mail registration
and the content has been evaluated and analysis has been sent to users email as pdf format.

Urkund must have uploaded the source content file to evaluate and report analysis of similarity
matching with other published resources.

URKUND can evaluate all most all the word processing formats.

Urkund facilitates to researchers support related to page view of content analysis of similarity
testing. It also evaluates the matching text analysis, warning massages, cross language content
similarity matching resources and original metrics of research content. It also shows colour bar
analysis of percentage of self-similarity and receiver average and provides reset report
statement and export report statement in Portable Document Format. User can verify alternative
matching, detailed text differences, toggling feature of highlighted quotes and parenthesis
highlight, warning message, export report and sharing option (Figure – 1). User can integrate
and share facilities with most of worldwide accepted learning management system. User can
evaluate the original content with the resources which are similar with match of original
resources.
 Figure – 1 Analysis overview of Urkund

Urkund web application communicated through REST-based protocol that uses XML or JSON
over HTTP.

According to Urkund provider, it supports integration around 43 world recognised learning

management system.

05B.5.2 Turnitin

Turnitin is web-based plagiarism detection cloud-based software as a service emerging in 1997,

developed by Turnitin, a US based company and a sister concerned of Advance Publications.

It is subscription based licenses to provide higher education institution for evaluating similarity
analysis against its own database and the content of web resources. The turnitin application has
been assessed through the similarities with existing resources to empower researchers for
avoiding plagiarism and improve their writing of originality for academic research integrity.

05B.5.2.1 Features of Turnitin

 Color-coding, filters, and source comparison for easy interpretation

 Data insights to show deliberate text manipulation
 Compare against the industry-leading database of content for comprehensive results
 Seamless integration with very few top learning management system (LMS) like
Blackboard, Canvas, MOODLE, Brightspace, Schoology

Turnitin is one of the prominent research integrity services providers and it assesses one million
submissions per day and indexes seven trillion phrases in its own database. It has been used by
top 81 world's leading universities and it supports near about 19 languages in the world.
Turnitin can access in two ways:

 Turnitin through web browser

 Using Turnitin with Learning Management system

05B.5.2.2 Modules in Turnitin

05B.[Link] Administrator module of Turnitin

The administrator area is a hub outside of any Learning Management System (LMS) you may
be using. This hub will allow you to do a variety of tasks from checking usage statistics to
choosing the account-wide settings for Similarity Reports at your institution (Figure – 2).

Figure – 2 Snapshot of Administrator module of Turnitin (1)

The settings described in the following guides will affect all the other accounts in your
institution (Figure - 3). Institutional administrators of the Turnitin system can generate the
whole report, Flag insight panel, flagged the users for research misconduct and the Authorship
Report of the institution.

Figure – 3 Snapshot of Administrator module of Turnitin (2)

05B.[Link] Investigators module of Turnitin

The guidance in investigator module, it supports the major information related to the authorship
for Investigators of the institution. There are two main areas of your Authorship for
Investigators account. In the Dashboard module, authority can view the potential scope and
scale of academic misconduct at the institution, and in the My Reports area, authority can
measure and manage authorship reports. Investigator and users both can upload their research
literature through either institutional or direct login to Turnitin (Figure – 4).

Figure – 4 Snapshot of File Upload Process in Turnitin

Basics Functionalities of the Instructor: Instructor modifies the users’ profile, direct
submission of research literature, File upload, and Similarity report generation.

In the Turnitin, Instructor of the institution can perform the following activities within the
software :-

 Changing your password

 Managing files and folders
 Adding a folder
 Choosing folder-level similarity storage options
 Editing a file or folder
 Finding a file or folder
 Moving a file or folder
 Deleting a file or folder
 Restoring from the trash
 Emptying the trash
 Editing Similarity Report settings

Direct submissions of paper, thesis, dissertation and reports

Designating a direct submission folder

File uploads

 Direct file upload

 Upload file via Google Drive
 Upload file via direct submission
 Evaluating the Similarity Report

Similarity report Generation

 Interpreting the similarity score

 Submission indexing
 Excluding an individual source
 Re-including a source
 Exclude text from the Similarity Report
 Exclude content from the Similarity Report
 Bibliography, quote and definition exclusion
 Exclude the search repositories
 Viewing match details of the primary sources with the plagiarism checking paper
 Using the search

Flag Insight Panel

 Document details
 Flags: The Flags panel specifies the text manipulations within the assignment. Two
types of flags have been showed i.e. “replaced characters” and “hidden characters”.
These manipulations signify the deliberate effort to bypass similarity algorithms.

Print: Investigator or instructor takes print of the document, similarity report and other
modules of the system.

05B.[Link] Using Turnitin with Learning Management system (LMS)

Administrator, instructor, and user can access Turnitin with integrated institutional LMS.
Everyone get access Turnitin for the submission of their assignment literature. Instructor
identifies the similarity of replaced and hidden character manipulation and help to improve the
research integrity in writing skill development and proper citation procedure within the
literature.

Assignments and Submissions

 Creating an assignment
 Adjustment of assignment settings
 Getting the students’ assignment from inbox
 Viewing submissions
Flags Insights Panel

 Document details
 Flags

The Similarity Report

 Accessing the Similarity Report

 Bibliography and quote exclusion definitions
 Excluding content from the Similarity Report
 Excluding an individual source
 Excluding search repositories
 Excluding text from the Similarity Report
 Re-including a source
 Interpreting the similarity score
 Using the search

Instructor can print every parts of the Instructors’ module of Turnitin through LMS and can
provide the similarity report to the users.

File requirements

Every file has been uploaded to create an Authorship Report needs to meet the following
requirements:

 File size must be less than 100 MB.

 File must have at least 500 characters.
 Accepted file types: .doc, .docx, .pdf, .txt, .rtf.
 After processing, your file's character and word count may differ to your word
processor.

05B.[Link] Dashboard

Starting from the provisioning of user Turnitin Originality account, Turnitin analyze the
student’s work every time. Users submit a paper from their institutional id via Turnitin, and
provide their paper which can be attributed to the student. Using the prediction algorithm,
Turnitin evaluate the paper and provide to the student as prediction score (Figure – 5). If the
user gets a score then the system gives for the consideration of high score to evaluate further
for rescanning of the paper, the system tags it to user’s Contract Cheating Risk Assessment
Dashboard.

The Dashboard should be used by academic integrity officers, student conduct officers, or
whoever conducts additional investigations into severe cases of academic misconduct at the
institution. Anyone using the Dashboard should already know what contract cheating is and be
aware of their institution's guidelines and policy on investigating suspected cases of academic
misconduct.
 Figure – 5 Snapshot of Turnitin Dashboard

The purpose of this Dashboard is to understand the potential scope and scale of academic
misconduct at the institution level and provide an approach to identify and work with the most
at-risk students in order to support a positive forward path.

It will show students from their institution whose work has been given a score of 0.57 or higher
by our prediction algorithm. The white filter box will show how many students have been
flagged in the Dashboard against the amount of students who have submitted (This will be the
dashboard view by default). The orange box will show the number of flagged students who
have a score between 0.57 and 0.76 (high priority). The red box will show the number of
flagged students who have a score between 0.77 and 1 (critical priority).

For example, the screenshot below shows that 3604 students have submitted to this Turnitin
account and 193 have been flagged (Figure – 6). These 193 students will be shown in the table
body of the Dashboard. Of those 193, 170 are of high priority and 23 are of critical priority.

Figure – 6 Snapshot of Creating an Authorship Report in Turnitin

There are two ways that you can generate an Authorship Report. By using a Turnitin paper ID,
or by file upload (Figure – 7 & 8).

Figure – 7 Snapshot of Report in Turnitin

Figure – 8 Authorship Reports in Turnitin

Academic writers rectify their literature from the evaluated similarity report with flagged
document. This flagged report shows in different colours for copying from different original
resources (Figure – 9).

Figure – 9 Similarity Matching in Turnitin

Originality report from Turnitin helps to academician how much percentage and where it is
copied from different original sources (Figure – 10). This originality report shows the similarity
index, percentage of internet resources, publication copied, copied from student papers, etc.
 Figure – 10 Originality Report in Turnitin

05B.[Link] Functions of Student Profile

In student profile, user can start through simple submission interface. Instructor can manage
the overall log activities of all the students who have enrolled via learning management system.
Every student has been registered through mail registration with name and enrollment number.
System will provide acknowledgement certificate of Turnitin registration for access to the
respective mail id of each student (Figure – 11).

Figure – 11 File Upload from Student Profile

Use the Select File button to choose the file you will upload to Turnitin.
  upload file size maximum limit is 200 MB

 single file should be less than 100MB and at least 20 words of text

 maximum article size less than 800 pages

 Zip files should be less than 200 MB and contain less than 100 files

 Supporting file types are Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PostScript, PDF,
HTML, HWP, RTF, Open Office(ODT), WordPerfect, and plain text

Before user can submit the file to the Turnitin, user must have to read out the End-user License
Agreement. If everything looks good, user can check the box to accept the agreement.
Lastly, User requires checking the option “I am not a robot” and confirming it finally.
At the time of the rest of your submission, user must have to press the submit button to upload
the file into Turnitin. At the point of the submission, the file won't be confirmed as successful
straight away, carefully check that the email has been supplied at the time of submission.

Similarity score from the Authorship Report

The Similarity score shows in the Insight Panel so user can check the similarity shown in their
respective uploaded content (Figure – 12).

Figure – 12 Similarity Report in Turnitin

Users can check, select and rectify their research literature from the Insight panel and also
rectify the highlighted text on the paper with proper citation of the sources from the sources
panel.

Unlike Turnitin's Similarity Report, users cannot make any changes to the score by excluding
sources and/or matches when opening the paper text from within the Authorship Report.

Authorship Dashboard or using the Paper ID method, user views the similarity score for the
files in Authorship Reports.
05B.5.3 Conclusion

Research integrity and ethical point of view in any writing literature are very much important
to avoid similarities in higher education system across a globe. With the advancement of ICT,
competitiveness across a globe, and ever growing universe of knowledge and enormous growth
of scholarly communication journals, there is a huge pressure and also high expectation of
enhancing quantities of academic writing among academicians. Plagiarism / similarities in
artifacts and its various aspects, lack of understandings, lack of awareness, and similarity
checking services as library services etc. are the prime issues in the academic community. A
very few research have been made in this area. Donald L. Mccabe, Josephson Institute Center
for Youth Ethics, David Wangaard and Jason Stephens, etc. have made small scale surveys on
high school, College and Graduate School students. Higher education institutions across a
globe have tried to measure and the similarity testing on academic writing and teaching
learning process(Bayaa Martin Saana, S.B., et al., 2016; Guthrie, 2009; McCabe, 2005, 2009).
International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) came into existence in the year 1992 by the
professor Don McCabe, Rutgers University. The ICAI have made an initiative on ICAI
Regional Consortia for academic integrity in local level network. This consortium enunciates
the academic integrity movement at the local level as well as in the global academic integrity
movement. This consortium disseminates the awareness on academic integrity, development
of networking. ICAI Regional Consortia has been developed the three regional level consortia
namely Canadian Consortium, Mid-Atlantic U.S. Consortium, Southeastern U.S. Consortium.
Each and every academician should go through the similarity checking process to improve
writing as well as prevent and enhance research integrity for the enhancement of quality and
standardisation of academic world.

Questions

1. Why Plagiarism tools have been used?

2. Illustrate the Cross-Language Plagiarism Software.
3. Write short notes on Image Plagiarism Software.
4. Write down the various features of Urkund.
5. Write short notes on Grammarly’s plagiarism checker.
6. Illustrate the various features of Turnitin.
7. What is Textual plagiarism Software?
8. What is the function of Flag Insights Panel in Turnitin?
9. Give some examples of open source Plagiarism software.
10. Write the various modules of Turnitin.

Bibliographical References

Bayaa Martin Saana, S.B., et al. (2016). Academic dishonesty in higher education: students’
perceptions and involvement in an African institution. BMC Res Notes 9, 234.
[Link] (Visited on 23rd June, 2021)

Guthrie, C. L. (2009). Plagiarism and Cheating: A Mixed Methods Study of Student Academic
Dishonesty (Thesis, Master of Social Sciences (MSocSc)). The University of Waikato,
Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from [Link] (Visited on 23rd
June, 2021)
McCabe, Donald L. (2005). Cheating among college and university students: A North
American perspective. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 1(1)
[Link] (Visited on 23rd June, 2021)

McCabe, Donald L. (2009). Academic Dishonesty in Nursing Schools: An Empirical

Investigation. [Link] (Visited on 23rd June, 2021)

Software URLs

Open Source Plagiarism Tools

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Proprietary Plagiarism Software

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