Plagiarism Detector Community

The Exact Sciences.


Text in these fields of knowledge showed certain features of their own, making the above-mentioned obfuscated Plagiarism detection algorithms unacceptable on many cases. Texts in Physics, Maths, etc. usually are much less flexible and enjoy a massive use of domain-specific constructions and expressions that are similar to many texts from the same domain of knowledge. One of the best examples was a certain medical prescription, which was considered Plagiarized upon checking. However a manual check did not confirm it. It turned out that most (if not all) of prescriptions use the same structure of the text as well as the same words and expressions. It is just the components, that change.

Let us take this example from Wikipedia:
“Take of pentobarbitone sodium, three grammes
of sulphate of morphia, two grammes
of hydrate of chloral, fifteen grammes
of table sugar, enough to make fifty grammes.”
And now let’s toss the ingredients randomly:
“Take of hydrate of chloral, three grammes
of pentobarbitone sodium, two grammes
of sulphate of morphia, fifty grammes
of table sugar, enough to make fifteen grammes.”

And now remember the example from the Arts section that was to be detected as Plagiarism. It is rather evident, that due to the same language used these parts will be considered the “same” text, that was obfuscated by changing the word order (one of the approached to obfuscation).

Sure, it is an error, one that we call false-positive. Errors of this kind are usual for all the Plagiarism detection algorithms that are aimed at detecting obfuscated Plagiarism.

Having it in mind, we modified the algorithm specifically for such texts, to detect only what we call “word-to-word” Plagiarism. This algorithm will correctly detect this “prescription” as two different texts, but will also detect those “Arts” example as different texts.

So this “word-to-word” Plagiarism Detection algorithm has the following features:
-   Detects only similar parts of texts
-   Prevents false-positive results
-   Usually shows less Plagiarism then a regular algorithm
-   Is bad at finding even slightly obfuscated Plagiarism

In the recent years we have had several versions of Plagiarism Detector, using this algorithm, and they were provided to customers, that required this kind of check. However having two very different versions is not what we see right, so our RnD spent much time on incorporating both algorithms into a single software!

Plagiarism Detector team is proud to announce the absolutely awesome feature added to Plagiarism Detector – presets for different kinds of documents are now available “out of the box”!

Some theory behind this:
It has been some time since we first observed cases, when our usual Plagiarism detection algorithms provided unsatisfactory results for certain documents. Additional research highlighted some common features for such cases. These are the specific features of the text in the Arts subjects and Exact Sciences subjects, as we started to call them. While the language for these documents is the same, they usually have some very interesting characteristics, which require different attitude from the Plagiarism detection algorithms.

So, starting with version 885, a user can select the preferable algorithm of check in the Step-by-Step Wizard! Please select “detect Text Rewrite (maximum detection)” if you documents are in the Arts subjects or other similar, and “detect Word-to-Word (maximum exactness)” if your documents are in the Exact Sciences’ fields.

We really believe that this new feature (that we have never seen before elsewhere) will help our customers in the ever-ongoing struggle against copy-paste!

Just discussed the situation with RnD.

1. Some kind of detailed setting to the T-Comparator is planned for the future.

2. Please provide a pair of reports (old-new) with a detailed explanation to what is wrong to our support e-mail (check forum PM). Our RnD requests that a problem is described so that we can be sure that "this" is what you are writing about. Screenshots may help much.

Any user-provided materials are used for internal testing only.

Versions before 874 have a problem with occasional license loss, somehow connected with USB-storages used. If you need to have your license re-initialized - please send us an e-mail, mentioning your license number.

I'm sorry for a much delayed reply.

Version 874 and later versions will have a special notification for a significant number of timeouted resources. It turned out, that many users, having poor Internet connection speeds didn't pay attention to this number, so we made it vivid. So we made this message.

Please take a look at this topic to know more about avoiding this problem: http://www.plagiarism-detector.com/smf_bb/index.php/topic,48.0.html

Version 874 uses a different check algorithm and does not have detailed settings so far.

Anyway, version 849 is back on our site, due to all these problems.

You have to use the "Active URL references" feature.
The paper published before is to be available in the Internet.
First you need to add the exact URL of the published paper to the body of your document. Pay attention: not the "notes" in the doc/x documents, as only the main text is extracted.

Second, start the program and follow the wizard up to the last screen.
Enable Detect "URL" references option.

Check your document.

If everything is done right - all the text, available at the link present in the document, will be considered "referenced" and marked blue.

I hope it helps.

It has come to our attention, that in some cases users are displeased with the search efficiency of the software, when the problem is actually the Internet access speed. Starting with version 852 we will be adding some additional features to make this problem more vivid and understandable.

First: all reports with the number of failed resources higher then the threshold (20% at present) will have the "Failed resources" cell colored Red:



More then that - every time a mouse goes over such a report - the hole line will be covered red, to make sure you see it, even on small screens.

Second: when opening such a report a special message box will appear, telling about the problem and leading to this topic.


Now, back to the problem itself:

Q. What can be the problem?
A. During the second stage of the check, Plagiarism Detector downloads a lot of possible resources for a detailed analysis. This creates a significant load on the Internet connection, and if the bandwidth is not enough - some resources are failed.

Q. Why is that a problem?
A. If none of the sources of plagiarism was downloaded - then it will not be detected. The impact of this problem differs between documents, but it can lead to a very poor detection.

Q. How can I know the number of failed resources for my report?
A. There is a "Rs Failed" column in the Available reports list showing it. Nearby columns show also the total number and the number of "OK" resources. A report also has this counters right between the chart and graph.

Q. I have 5 resources failed! Is that a problem?
A. Not necessarily. Almost all reports show some failed resources, for example when the site is not available at the moment. It only becomes a problem when there are a lot of such fails in comparison with the overall number of resources.

Q. Can I get to know more about the failed resources?
A. Yes. Press "Toggle other sources" in the report. Failed resources are there in the beginning of the list. Here is the list of possible error code: http://www.plagiarism-detector.com/smf_bb/index.php/topic,27.0.html For the problem in question that is usually "Timouted".

Q. What can be done about it?
A. Please refer to the first message in this topic (in the end of it).

We hope it will help to make your work with our software even better!