Friday, January 7, 2011

Results of the Plagiarism Detection Software Test 2010

We held an online press conference today, one in German visited by over 30 persons and one in English with 16. There were journalists, bloggers, system developers, and interested university people from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Netherlands, Spain, Finland, England and the USA gathered to listen and to ask questions. It was great that we were able to use the Adobe Connect system that the DFN provides for German universities, thanks a lot!

I am exhausted after the effort of concentration, and we still are not done with the entire web site, but it is coming along slowly. We have the results in English for the first time, the link is http://plagiat.htw-berlin.de/software-en/. We will be growing the web site over the next few weeks.

The top group only found between 61% and 70% of the plagiarism, so our best grades were just a C- for effectiveness. We were also evaluating usability and professionalism this year, and were able to demonstrate that one system resells access to another system (without permission) and another runs a term paper mill from the same street address and almost the same telephone number.

The systems in the top group are PlagAware, Turnitin, Ephorus, PlagScan, and Urkund.
The long version of the report is also available online.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for the hard work done - this is exactly the information I was looking for. I don't even know most of the plagiarism detection services/software you list - so I wouldn't have found the good ones without your help.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like to put here straight the message that pieces of software like URKUND are not legal if it is used against the authors (free) will.

    Lets see when the first universities get sued and face injunctions, people put into jail (rectors and staff alike) for their wrong doing.

    I HOPE THAT THIS WOULD ALSO BE A BIG STORY IN THE NEWS.

    Universities "try" to teach intellectual property rights but seemingly have no real clue what it is about in reality. Shame on those theachers and profs. who infringe the law and get away with it.

    ReplyDelete

Please note that I moderate comments. Any comments that I consider unscientific will not be published.