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Effectiveness of Anti-plagiarism Software in Deterring Plagiarism
The use of anti-plagiarism software to detect copying of works from published articles
and websites is currently being employed in many educational centers. The rationale behind the
application of this tool is to minimize replication and also to encourage students to put more of
their personal input accompanied by the proper citation of the sources that have been used. While
plagiarism is still being practiced, there is significant indication that the levels have reduced
considerably. The relationship between various methods used and the overall outcome bring us to
the question: Is anti-plagiarism software useful in deterring the stealing of Published work? In
my opinion, such software is effective in discouraging theft of available materials because it can
detect cases of plagiarism by searching through websites, archived databases, and the internet to
show the level or percentage of copied work. By using this information, the teachers and tutors
can penalize scholars thus hindering plagiarism.
Thesis Statement
Anti-plagiarism software is an efficient deterrent to stealing published work because it
can detect when students try to deceive lecturers by changing words, adding sentences, or
restructuring their papers, it is fast and reliable, and it also archives past submitted papers on the
internet or in-house resources for future checking. Schools and colleges should make use of these
tools to ensure that students present their work and reduce the amount of plagiarism in the
education sector. However, the ineffectiveness towards limiting theft is centered on the inability

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of such software to analyze all spheres of writing. This gives room for students to continue with
the practice.
Background Information
Assignments, term papers, and research are part of the requirements for students at any
level of study. During the undertaking of these demands, students tend to do a shoddy job
sometimes copying and pasting directly from websites and other published materials. While this
practice is illegal, the other issue that comes into play is that students are not learning. Instead,
they use other peoples jobs and claim them as their own without doing an in-depth research to
understand the concepts therein. Plagiarism detection software is dedicated to addressing this
issue as much as possible.
Reason 1
Anti-plagiarism software is fast and reliable, therefore it can be used to check and
provide an overview of submitted assignments accurately and quickly. There are various online
and offline software such as Turnitin, essay verification engine and plagiarism.org and they all
can be applied by the teachers, lecturers or professors. The process usually involves placing the
work into the tool and a report is generated to indicate the sentences that have been copied and
the overall percentage of originality (ESC Instructional Technology Toolbox). In this short
period, the instructor can attach the report to the assignment and the student can to review the
work. Marks can be awarded using the level of plagiarism for example if it is less than 5%, full
marks can be granted while the targets reduce with increasing cases of plagiarism. The speed and
accuracy of this software combined with the consequences warn the students and can encourage
them to be more careful.

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Reason 2
In some cases, students may try to mislead their instructors by changing a few words,
adding sentences or re-organizing paragraphs so that plagiarism is not detected. The
effectiveness of some of this software is shown by their ability to detect such alterations.
Apparently, an assignment which has stolen work but with synonyms used to replace certain
words will be identified. For this reason, a student will be discouraged from trying to mislead the
examiner (Raimondi). Re-organization of paragraphs will also be noticed and indicated. The
overall outcome is that a slight detection of an attempt to piracy and breaching of intellectual
property will not go unnoticed.
Reason 3
According to Chris Harrick, Vice President of Turnitin, anti-plagiarism software is based
on the gathering of archives from internet, website articles and peer-reviewed articles. Student
writings are compared to over 45 billion web pages, 110 million published content material, and
400 million student papers (Turner). Every day, new additional sources are archived for future
use, and this translates to an updated database that is not easy to go around without being
discovered. So students who are working on their papers should understand that the originality of
their submissions is subjected to high-level scrutiny before being accepted as original.
Counterargument
Anti-plagiarism software on the other hand may be deemed ineffective because it cannot
distinguish between correctly cited materials and plagiarized ones (ESC Instructional
Technology Toolbox). This event can happen in cases where the writer has quoted a statement
but cited it correctly; the software will identify it as plagiarism. Similarly, papers that have

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tables, figures and numbers are not easy to be observed for incidences of piracy. For instance, the
source of an article with a table with data that has been directly copied from published materials
cannot be easily identified. Essentially, the theft-checking tools could be considered ineffective
since a considerable number of individuals have found ways of plagiarizing and getting away
with it.
Conclusion
Although plagiarism checking software may not be 100% efficient due to the setbacks
and disadvantages mentioned above, its role towards minimizing theft of other peoples work is
paramount. Most of the counterarguments can be handled by the tutor who has to judge whether
the plagiarism was accidental or intentional. The ultimate function of the anti-plagiarism
software is apparently achieved through the uncovering of students misdeeds. The outcome of
being caught certainly dissuades learners from practicing such.

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Works Cited
ESC Instructional Technology Toolbox. "Effectiveness of Anti-Plagiarism Software." 2014. AntiPlagiarism Software Pros and Cons. Document. 26 June 2016.
Raimondi, Franco. On the Effectiveness of Anti-plagiarism Software. London: Middlesex
University, 2012. Document.
Turner, Cory. "Turnitin And The Debate Over Anti-Plagiarism Software." 25 August 2014. NPR
ED. Document. 26 June 2016.