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What Does a Plagiarism Report Consist of?

The increasing threat of copied content has led to increase in the use of plagiarism checkers. The standards that prevail today require advanced plagiarism software that is able to detect not only similarities but also check various cheats that may be used in the text. Above all, the plagiarism report that the tool prepares should contain all the information from various similarities to the exact words used in the webpage.

In short, it has to consist of everything that makes the users’ work easier. This article answers questions such as “What is a plagiarism report?”, “What is a good plagiarism score” and other relevant questions.

What is Plagiarism?

To make things easier to understand, we will start by looking at the meaning of plagiarism. A text is called a plagiarized text when it contains points or ideas from other articles, and it does not have any credits or citations to the original source. In other words, plagiarism is an act of using another person’s work without documenting any references. Therefore, while you refer to any external source, you need to always make sure to cite sources appropriately.

Citations are of various styles with each style used for a specific type of paper. A citation style has its own guidelines that you need to follow. Reading those guidelines can be a good start to get an idea about how each style works. You can also consult your professors, seniors, or even your peers who have prior experience in writing a paper.

Other than not providing valid references, plagiarism can also arise from paraphrasing a text. Always avoid paraphrasing too much as it is one of the valid reasons to reject your work. Moreover, quoting the text that you referred to from another article can also be a good tip. Try to incorporate your ideas and views about the subject, for it will make your content unique.

What Constitutes a Good Plagiarism Report?

A plagiarism report is the most important aspect of any plagiarism checker, and it helps the user make changes to his or her work. Therefore, the report has to be effective and worth referring to. There are certain things that a plagiarism report must mandatorily have. They are:

  • Plagiarism Percentage: A plagiarism checker detects all the similarities in the text and puts them in percentage. The report must accurately display the percentage of plagiarism. However, showing a percentage is just the basic functionality. To make it a bit more intuitive for the user, the plagiarism reports today display the percentage in different colors depending on the risk. If the percent is displayed in green your content will pass, if it is in orange or yellow it has a slight risk of being rejected, and if the color code is red, then the work is being rejected for sure.
  • Highlighting the Plagiarized Text: All reports need to highlight the plagiarized content to make it easier to identify. Furthermore, there will be a side-by-side view to help you see the original source of the copied text. The advanced plagiarism detection software has a feature where each kind of plagiarism is highlighted in a different color. For example, most tools highlight the text in red for word-for-word plagiarism, pink for paraphrased content and orange for potentially plagiarized content.
  • Options to Ignore Certain Words: This option is not available in most free plagiarism tools. When a plagiarism checker compares two articles, it highlights all the matched text. However, this result, in some cases can be undesirable, especially when there are specific keywords involved. If an article is written for a webpage, the writer cannot ignore any keywords as they are crucial to get the webpage to the top in the search engineresults. Therefore, having a feature that enables the user to ignore those keywords can help him check the actual percentage of copied content and make changes accordingly.
  • Cheat Detection Prompt: This is a new feature that all new plagiarism checkers have. With the help of artificial intelligence, the tool is able to detect cheats and prompt them to the user. Cheats are certain methods used to exploit the plagiarism tool, but this works only in regular plagiarism checkers. While detecting plagiarism, these tools identify the words just as a group of symbols, which is a major flaw. Knowing how plagiarism checkers work enables the user to find a workaround, which uses various symbols and character to make the plagiarism tool recognize it as a different word.
  • Clear and Concise: Even if the report has all the things mentioned above, it is not considered to be perfect unless it is structured well. The report that is displayed must be clear and must contain all the specifics regarding the various aspects used such as a legend indicating the colors, what each color code means, a side-by-side view of both the copied and the original text, etc. Having all the information in a manner that is pleasing to the eye can improve the user’s experience considerably.

What Is the Plagiarism Acceptable Percentage?

The plagiarism percentage, which is also called the plagiarism score, determines whether the text can be approved or not. It is common knowledge that you must keep your work free from plagiarism, but the words “free from plagiarism” do not mean it should be completely unique. There is a certain score which is called a plagiarism acceptable percentage. For academic papers written by students who pursue higher education the accepted percentage of plagiarism is 15, and anything above that is considered duplicate content. As far as journal papers are concerned, the score can go up to 24 percent. Plagiarism is a serious issue, which everyone has to deal with at some point in their life. With the development of plagiarism checker tools, one is able to assess and find out plagiarism easily. Nevertheless, finding the right plagiarism is much difficult because of the sheer number of tools present on the Internet. A plagiarism report is a major aspect for judging whether the checker is good or not and having knowledge about what a good report should contain can help you make the right decision.

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