Decorating yourself with someone else's feathers is generally not considered honorable. Not all students are necessarily aware that the consequences of a plagiarized bachelor thesis go far beyond the question of - scientific - honor and, in the worst case, can lead to forced de-registration. More and more authors of bachelor theses, master theses, and dissertations, therefore, want to play it safe and let the results of their laborious research be put through their paces - in other words: for incomplete or incorrectly specified sources.
Learn more about : What is Plagiarism
What can programs for the plagiarism check (not) do?
To understand what plagiarism checking tools do (and what not), one should understand how these programs work. Put somewhat simply; the systems do precisely what any ordinary mortal would have thought of: They identify suspicious sections in a text, look up these sections in a search engine, read through the references, and summarize the results in a more or less pretty report. So far,so easy. Annoyingly, as is so often the case, the devil lies in the details, because of course, each of these steps can be done better or worse. But in order:
* The determination of suspicious sections: This is essentially about how many and which sections are checked - because checking all groups of words without exception is not feasible with the current state of the art. Many programs for the plagiarism check have language databases that rate "interesting" - that is, rare - words and word combinations higher than familiar places that appear in this or something similar in every work. Ultimately, plagiarism search engines increase the probability of landing a relevant hit with a word combination, i.e., discovering a plagiarized text passage.
* Lookup in a search engine: For the sections determined in this way, corresponding documents are searched for in the network. Very few tools for plagiarism checking are reinventing the wheel but are using the major search engines Google and Bing, usually enriched with their libraries. This means that what Google & Co cannot find is usually not seen by the plagiarism checking machines. But be careful - there are exceptions in both directions. Because plagiarism checkers have often licensed text databases that are not publicly available, on the other hand, websites occasionally block non-human users - and thus also plagiarism search engines.
* Preparation of the test report: The rest is hard work. The sources suggested by the search engine are read in, compared with the test text, and listed, provided they match well enough. When creating the report, when presenting the sources found and the options for revising the test report,
the systems for the plagiarism check differ significantly from one another. Ultimately, your requirements and, last but not least, your taste decide here.
Source, quote, or plagiarism?
As expected, online public sources were recognized and colored in the text. Clicking on a reference does not open the original document but rather clearly shows which sections have been copied. This works amazingly well and reveals how much a source has been rephrased.
Therefore, systems for the plagiarism check are pretty good at finding the sources of your bachelor thesis and representing the type of revision. But you have to help with the interpretation - at least if the percentages or plagiarism traffic lights of the plagiarism scan should make sense. When choosing the tool, make sure that manual interpretation is also supported.
In a Nutshell - Tips & Tricks for the plagiarism check of your Bachelor thesis
Programs for the plagiarism check can give you some security for a manageable investment before you submit your valuable bachelor thesis. But they are certainly not a panacea for incomplete and incorrect literature submissions. In particular, you should view the plagiarism check as a tool for the constant improvement of your work, check the sources carefully, and not rely too much on the plagiarism traffic lights.
* Before you upload the texts for the plagiarism check, read through what happens to your readers. Are they going to be made available to the whole world? Can they be deleted at any time? Do you keep the rights to the text? If you cannot find this information, look for another program if in doubt.
* Do not upload your texts in the original format, but save them as plain text. It saves bandwidth and nerves during the transmission and makes it easier for the plagiarism checker to read the text correctly. That makes the plagiarism check better and often cheaper.
* Do not expect all literature sources to be found. Plagiarism-checking programs are good at finding public electronic resources but have minimal ability to find paid articles (and no printed books).
* Do not interpret too much in plagiarism traffic lights "No - Maybe - Certainly a plagiarism." In addition, even the best tools cannot decide whether you have quoted according to the rules of your examination regulations - or not.
* Beware of plagiarism from other Bachelor theses! Almost all plagiarism check programs used by schools and universities can include previous work in the check. If you carry out the plagiarism check yourself, these sources will, of course, not be found.
* If possible, include the URLs of the sources in the text. Good tools use this information to decide whether or not to have a passage in the text.
* Pay attention to whether you are allowed to revise your test text free of charge - or whether a new (paid) plagiarism check is then due. Many (but not all) tools let you manually exclude sources. If you have already published your work (or parts of it) somewhere, this function is necessary to ignore false positives.
