Plagiarism Detection Software Test 2013

Today I released the results of the Plagiarism Detection Software Test 2013. The report is available online, as are the individual results. Spiegel online reported on the test, including a picture of the home pages of the systems and the company response to the results, if the company cared to answer. We also offer the companies the opportunity to send us their comments on the test, we are glad to publish them.

The results can be summed up rather simply:

So-called plagiarism detection software does not detect plagiarism. In general, it can only demonstrate text parallels. The decision as to whether a text is plagiarism or not must solely rest with the educator using the software: It is only a tool, not an absolute test.

If a university decides to use plagiarism detection software, they need to have a clear policy on why they are using the software and how they will react to the results. It would be good to set up a competence team that offers educators help in testing suspicious texts, and to perhaps have two systems on offer, as the systems find different sources for different parts of the same source.