PlagScan

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PlagScan

PlagScan logo
Basic data

Maintainer PlagScan GmbH
Publishing year 2009
operating system platform independent (web application)
category Online plagiarism software
German speaking Yes
plagscan.com

PlagScan is online plagiarism software that is used on the one hand by academic institutions (e.g. high schools, universities) and on the other hand by commercial organizations (e.g. publishers, bloggers). PlagScan is used by teachers and university professors to check submitted texts for possible plagiarism .

History and use

The company PlagScan GmbH was founded in 2009 by Markus Goldbach and Johannes Knabe. PlagScan is used by more than 1000 organizations worldwide, such as the University of Jordan, the United Nations Development Program , Moviepilot and the Free University of Berlin . The majority of customers are in Germany and Austria. Well-known customers are here: B. the University of Innsbruck , the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, the University of Konstanz , the University of Regensburg , the University of Zurich and the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf . In Austria, all pre-academic work by students is now checked with PlagScan.

PlagScan is designed to help maintain academic integrity and compliance with copyright law. On the commercial market, the software is used to improve the SEO ranking , for example , or to check copyrighted content with PlagScan for illegal use. Most of the commercial users are in publishing , advertising, and journalism .

Functions

PlagScan compares submitted texts with a large number of text documents that are available on the Internet and other databases . In particular, internal documents of customers are searched exclusively for source matches if necessary. PlagScan checks several million documents for plagiarism every year.

PlagScan can either be used within an existing learning management system such as B. Moodle , or as a web service in the browser. The administrator of an organization can also create additional administrators or groups in order to differentiate between individual departments (e.g. faculties) within an organization.

After the plagiarism check, the examiners receive a report that matches other texts that may indicate plagiarism. In addition, the hit list shows all other documents in which possible matches were found.

technology

The two-stage algorithm , which is based on the latest findings in computational linguistics , was developed in 2008 and has been regularly updated and improved since then.

The software recognizes matches as soon as at least three consecutive words have been found in another source. If these appear only in isolation in small sections or are quoted directly, they are rated as irrelevant. Users can also upload their own texts for comparison in a private database in order to then compare them with their new texts. The PlagScan database continues to grow as a result.

The indexing is based on Apache Solr or the Microsoft Bing Search index is used for web documents .

reception

According to SZ , PlagScan Unis offers software to fight fraud . According to a comparison by Spiegel.de, users can set different sensitivities . According to Handelsblatt, the PlagScan software was intended to prove that the Spanish Prime Minister Sánchez had not written off his doctoral thesis. However, wrong filters were used by the user. However, PlagScan has problems recognizing text passages that have been translated into other languages. In return, the software has the advantage that the fed-in data can be managed on the university's own servers , thus maintaining full data sovereignty and control . Wirtschaftswoche noted that the Guttenberg affair had given PlagScan a good boost. One point of criticism stated is that PlagScan is not linked to the Google book search.

PlagScan is one of the established products on the market.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Yannick Ndombe: Plagiarism check in schools - What we can learn from the Austrians. WebService press release, February 9, 2016, accessed on September 26, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Dealing with plagiarism uzh.ch
  3. ↑ PlagScan - Why PlagScan? In: www.plagscan.com. Retrieved August 11, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Matthias Kohlmaier: Software against plagiarism: "Universities cannot accept such a situation". Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 12, 2019, accessed on September 26, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Frauke Lüpke-Narberhaus and Oliver Trenkamp: Plagiarism search software in the test: This is how the programs cut from 10/17. Spiegel Online, October 7, 2013, accessed September 26, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Sandra Louven: Allegations of plagiarism: How a German software developer gets into the mills of Spanish politics. Handelsblatt, September 21, 2018, accessed on September 26, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Raphael Zemp: Plagiarism: Lucerne universities rely on support instead of modern software. Luzerner Zeitung, October 15, 2018, accessed on September 26, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Max Haerder: Guttenberg Effect: How a young entrepreneur successfully tracks down plagiarism. WirtschaftsWoche, September 8, 2011, accessed on September 26, 2019 .
  9. ^ Sebastian Pumberger: Weber: Electronic plagiarism search for older works "Glücksfall". derstandard.at, February 6, 2013, accessed on September 30, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Eric Brown: Growth of Anti-Plagiarism Software Market Size in Global Industry: Overview, Size and Share 2019-2025. Daily News Collectors, September 20, 2019, accessed September 30, 2019 .
  11. ↑ William vanhouten: Anti-Plagiarism Software Market to Witness Growth During a Pronounce 2025. Daily Watch reports, accessed on September 30, 2019 (English).