New free plagiarism website

Date: March 10, 2009
Where: The Campus Voice

For some students the idea of blatant plagiarism doesn't really concern them. In fact, many would have no qualms about copying an entire paper and submitting it, if it meant that much less work for them.

Where does that leave the honest students who would never dream of such a thing, but find themselves accused of it due to improperly citing a source?

We've all heard of turnitin.com and the teachers that use it. Regardless of how truthful you are, everyone feels that little bit of nerves knowing your paper is going to be scrutinized by it. Did I put that into my own thoughts enough? Did I properly cite that paragraph? How is a student to know?

Turnitin.com heard the questions and brought an answer: writecheck.turnitin.com. This site provides the same database as the teachers get at turnitin.com, but it doesn't store the paper. This means that when your teacher goes to submit your paper, it will not come up as a replica.

Sounds pretty great doesn't it? However, it comes at a price. You can expect to spend $4.95 for a paper up to 5,000 words, $19.95 for up to 25,000 words, and $49.95 for a 200,000 word thesis.Considering the fact that your teacher or school is already paying for their half of it, it seems like a pretty steep price, but what else are you to do?

This is where developer Jeffrey Smith, comes in with the creation of plagiarismdetect.com. It is designed for those students that often have plagiarism issues with their papers, and already has over 105,000 registered users. His site is free, and offers comparable results to writecheck.turnitin.com. Plus, it's free! What struggling student can argue with that?

All you have to do is register, upload your paper, choose what resources you want checked such as books, websites, online journals, etc., along with the option of doing a quick check or a more detailed in-depth one. The results of the check are listed in seconds, and cover every sentence of your paper.

Though plagiarismdetect.com may not have the notoriety that turnitin.com has, it's definitely a site worth looking into.