How to Check for Plagiarism Online Using Duplicate Content Checker

If you create any form of content, the need to ensure that what you have written is original is very important. Make sure that all the work done is original to maintain the image of the author and avoid getting in trouble with the law of ethics. 

Thankfully, modern technology has come up with several duplicate content checker software that assist one in distinguishing original content from plagiarized material. This blog focuses on how to test for plagiarism and the simple steps in making sure that the content is original.

Online Tools to Check Duplicate Content

Here are the top 5 best plagiarism checking tools in 2024 that can help you out with all your content editing and plagiarism detection needs:

Steps to Check for Plagiarism Online

1. Choose the Right Tool

Considering the number of available unique content checker tools for detecting plagiarism, we recommend that you choose a specific one based on your requirements. A good plagiarism detection tool not only detects and highlights plag in content but also gives reports, matches sources, and is easy to navigate. 

Here’s what to consider when choosing the right plagiarism checker.

• Word Limit and Accessibility: If you are working on long pieces of text, look for a check site for duplicate content that has no word limit or its premium version allows a considerably high limit.
• Accuracy and Source Matching: Go for a duplicate content website checker that has highly effective plagiarism scanning capabilities. Many tools also help mitigate the risks of source copying by providing exact source matches, where contents flagged can be resolved.
• Report Features: Effective unique content checker can also include the percentage of original content, portions that have been highlighted as duplicates, and even sources that have been matched with other documents. Furthermore, these reports need to be ‘user friendly’ and allow easy download capabilities as well as export in different formats.
• File Upload Options: A good plagiarism checker should allow users to upload files of different formats for example .docx .pdf, .txt, etc. This is important when you do not want to remove your content by doing it manually through copy and paste.
• Pricing and Plans: Nowadays, it is possible to find free duplicate plagiarism checkers for modest and quick control checks, but this is often ineffective. Aggressive pricing analysis needs to be conducted with respect to the different tools and features at any level.

Suggested Read: Top 15 Best Plagiarism Detection and Remover Tools in 2024

2. Enter Your Content

The second step in the process is to enter the text during the check by either filling in the field for checking with your version of the text or using the option of document upload. Use clean content without extra HTML or any other formatting elements for the best outcome. 

Most of the plagiarism detection services allow for .docx, .pdf, and .txt as well as .rtf file formats hence the need to upload finished works for ease of operation. Mentioned below is the type of content you can check using a duplicate content checker:

• Web Content: Measures the text of the users using a web database of articles and blogs of any public web content.
• Academic Papers: Surveys the literature and discourses contained in academic research work including articles, theses, and dissertations.
• Student Submissions: Look into the institutional databases and pre-existing submissions by students to avert self-plagiarism or cutting and pasting from other students’ submissions.
• Published Books: Processes contents of books, eBooks, and other forms of publishing work against the contents of the book that have been broadly published, to check for theft of ideas.
• Research Reports: Assess extent of originality of white papers, case studies or any investigative report by computing similarity indexes with available works in related to academic and professional fields.
• News Articles: Processes new and past editions of the newspapers to check that such content is not reproduced from other outlets and news articles available on the web.
• Website Code: Measures the amount of code, or text, that appears in the HTML of a webpage in order to manage the amount of content which is the same across different pages on a website.
• Marketing Materials: Violations of advertising restrictions are checked for brochures, advertising text, and other promotional activities in order to avoid imitation of competitors’ designs or advertising materials.
• Legal Documents: Analyzes contracts, agreements, and legal briefs for possible instances of copying using existing drafts or files of previously submitted legal documents.

In addition to the ability to upload a single document, many other tools have a bulk upload functionality, which is helpful, especially for educational institutions. With this capability, users can check multiple documents which reduces the time consumed, while still being precise.

3. Start the Checking Process

After you have entered your desired content by copy-pasting or by uploading a file, the commencement of the plagiarism check is upon clicking the “Check” or “Scan” button. Let us discuss the types of databases against which a duplicate plagiarism checker compares the content:

Types of Databases Scanned:

• Web Content: Most plagiarism detection tools have search capabilities to scan billions of web pages that are indexed. This makes sure that your content is not be similar to content from the internet, blogs, news articles or even general website content.
• Academic Databases: These are usually used by students and researchers to check the text against academic content present in databases such as Crossref, Proquest and other databases. These databases contain articles, research papers, and dissertations so as to offer a better depth of assessment for academic work.
• Institutional Repositories: Most of the plagiarism detection apps have facilities that provide them with old student works and old school records which help them spot overlap of current and past works.
• Published Books: Protective resources such as Turnitin and Copyleaks also protect literature works by comparing digital copies of work such as books and other literature to eliminate chances of plagiarizing text from popular digital literature.
• Private Databases: In some applications, organizations may choose to upload external databases, of internal papers, presentations, and even copyrighted material in order to screen out self-plagiarism and duplication within the entity or its department.

In some cases, plagiarism detection software allows the user to exclude certain sources or parts of the documents from being checked such as quotes, references, and citations. This comes in handy when a writer uses correctly cited material or standard phrases that would otherwise be considered as content theft. 

Many tools propose citation creation or recognition in order to avoid flagging of properly cited content. In case of table of contents citation being incomplete, the tool may offer example citations in preEtalics like APA or MLA, Chicago etc. To substantiate your claims, references are important and so are the plagiarism detection software.

4. Reporting and Analysis

After the duplicate content checker has completed its operation, a constructive analysis report detailing the originality status of the content is rendered. This report is very important in the understanding of the limits of duplication as well as ways to overcome it. 

Here’s what the report includes:

• Overall Originality Score: In the report, there is an overall score based on originality, which indicates the extent to which your content is not plagiarized. 
• Sections Highlighted: The software marks particular parts of a text that have a match somewhere else or that are suspected to be plagiarized. 
• Source Match: The report also contains the address of the sources that had the matching information. You can go to the sources provided and determine whether the portion in question needs to be edited or whether proper citations will take care of it

5. Make Corrections and Ensure Plagiarism-Free Content

If any of the sections of your work are flagged by the plagiarism test, you have to make the content in this section unique. Mentioned below are the tips and tricks through which you can create your content unique and plagiarism free:

• Rewrite Flagged Sections: Go through the text areas that were highlighted as duplicated content. Write these segments again but change the sentence structure and wording entirely so the message is still the same as the original one.
• Cite Properly: In the case, the contents that were flagged include materials published elsewhere, take steps to ensure proper and timely attribution. Simply provide MLA, APA or whichever style applies to your discipline, and credit the source with the right author.
• Check for Common Phrases: Occasionally, brief phrases or idiomatic expressions might also come up in the red flag. If the text is a language that is commonly used or a phrase that cannot be avoided, these may be exempt from the report by the usage of the customize feature of the tool.
• Use a Thesaurus or Synonyms: To help with the writing process, avoid using the same words over and over again and use other words that mean the same or similar things. This helps extenuate the content from already existing works of literature without changing the core message.
• Recheck Your Content: After you perform the changes, don’t forget to perform another check of the document for similarities against outside sources. This will assist in determining if it is still necessary to make any further adjustments and if the originality percentage has increased.

Suggested Read: 10 Best Free Plagiarism Checker Tools in 2024

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing an academic article, or a blog, being original in your own work is very important. It makes it possible to maintain honesty and improve the quality of one’s work by simply checking for plagiarism online. 

There is no reason why your writing cannot be original and refined as long as the appropriate tool is selected. But this is only one phase in the process of preventing the use of plagiarized content. After conducting a plagiarism check, it is restructured or correctly referenced to make it unique and original.