The use of plagiarism detection software by essay writing companies

A lot of essay writing companies claim to plagiarism detection software to ensure a custom written essay is plagiarism free. Can anyone confirm or disprove this?

Hard to believe that. If they claim to use turnitin or similar systems that store the submitted essays on their servers (one submission is enough to do that), it wouldn't make sense at all. Because the next time another person submits the essay, it shows as "plagiarized." It's like if I wanted to prove the egg is not broken by breaking it :).

Hi Nenn and Major,

We use our own bespoke plagiarism scanner that ensures that none of our researchers have plagiarised. As every piece of work is sent in, it is quality checked and scanned for any instances of plagiarism.

We do not operate in conjunction with TurnItIn or Universities, therefore there is no chance that any of our customers can be accused of plagiarism.

Regards,
PeterParker

Most of the times I smile when I hear a writing company claims it uses "their own plagiarism scanner." It's like they claimed they use their own, privately-developed search engine which is at least comparable to Google. How can you compare billions of documents already posted online in many different formats using your own "plagiarism scanner"?

Hi Major,

Our scanner was commissioned and created for us (and funded privately, by us), but operates almost exactly in the same way as TurnItIn (the only difference is that we don't have access to some of their resources).

This ensures that each piece of work is completely original work.

If your in doubt, try it yourself.

Regards,
PeterParker

Try what ourselves exactly?

He means try their viper plagiarism detection software. It is downloadable from their website. In all honesty, i dont think plagiarism is an issue to worry about. The thing to worry about is whether your hard earned cash will be paying for an essay of quality or an essay that's not worth the paper it's written on.

Hi

Is viper plagiarism detection the same quality with turnitin or my drop box?

Thank you

To be honest i do not think there is much difference. But obviously the viper software will not be able to check for plagiarism against work already submittted into the turnitin database.

I've tried registering an account for Viper, but for some reason I keep getting an error message.

i downloaded viper but couldnt test it out because it had an error with it. I didnt bother trying it again. To be honest i dont think ukessays and most other essay companies deliver plagiarised work.

Hi All,

If you would like to email or call us with your specific issues regarding Viper, someone will be more than happy to help.

For customers, Viper means that they can scan their own work to ensure it's free of accidental plagiarism (for example, a missing reference or a misplaced quotation mark) which lessens the risk of them being accused by an academic establishment of plagiarism, when they have simply made a mistake (this is something that TurnItIn doesn't allow for, it's black and white, plagiarised or not).

For us, it ensures that our writers are creating original work and that the work we provide is completely free of plagiarism when we delivery the work.

Regards,
PeterParker

I tried the viper scanner to check for any plagiurism in my essay. The terms and condition state that the company keeps a copy of the work that was scanned. Therefore does this mean that if my university use a different plagiurism checker (such as turnitin) then my essay would be regonised as 100% plagiurised because the viper company has a copy of it?

There is no need to ask the same question on multiple threads :)

Nothing beats turnitin. It does not simply scan a paper against internet pages and caches but against 1) articles published on subscriber-restricted databases (Ebsco, Jstor, etc.), 2) published books scanned and available through Oxford University libraries and 3) importantly, against student papers across the world (those submitted to turnitin). In my experience, it is the most reliable ever. Now (which I find very useful) it gives users the option of scanning against all of the above without depositing and storing the uploaded paper in its repository. This ensures against writers submitting the same piece of work (or parts of it) to different clients.

No, it doesn't. If you ran your paper through Viper, it can't be detected by turnitin, unless it was previously submitted to turnitin. Turnitin will check the paper against all the previous papers in it's own database, however it can't access the database of any other plagiarism detector.

If you trully want to make sure that your paper is safe, despite the fact that you checked it by Viper, go and use writecheck.turnitin (Turnitin for students) and run it through. You'll have to buy 5$ credit for 5,000 words, but at least you'll know what is your standing.

Turnitin allows for the use of their platform, including scanning against student papers, WITHOUT sumbitting to, and storing your project on its STUDENT REPOSITORY. Whatever company you use and whichever scanner they employ, make sure that they provide you with proof (or a guarantee) that your paper has not been stored (by them) on any platform/database. If they are unable to provide such an assurance, you can easily scan it yourself using writecheck.turnitin.com, specifically DO NOT SUBMIT TO STUDENT REPOSITORY.

I am unsure of what company it was but a friend of mine had a paper completed, it was supposed to be a custom paper and she ended up with a meeting with the teacher after class due to suspicious plagiarism. So yes, plagiarism can be a problem.

It can be solved with honest writers/

Welcome back with your first ID. I am sure you now know very well how you can save your names from being banned, don't you?

I am sure you now know very well how you can save your names from being banned, don't you?

Back during the early days when I was just starting out.

The first company that I worked for announced that they had just purchased a plagiarism software for their company to help writers avoid plagiarism pitfalls.

They had actual plagiarism report generators that were emailed to writers prior to client submission so that the writer could correct the "plagiarized" content of the essay. The problem with that system was that it cited all properly referenced quotes in the essay as plagiarized, along with the words "I, the, an. am, that, he, she" and a host of other words without which an essay can never be written.

When we complained about it, the company said their software was "flawless" and "faultless". We asked them to try writing an essay without verbs, connecting words, nouns, conjunctions, etc. They eventually stopped using that software because the writers refused to work.

They made it impossible for us to do so because of their software. As time progressed and I started moving across companies, I still found evidence of plagiarism detection software use by the companies. It always did them worse than good but these idiot scam companies place their unwavering faith in the flawed and stupid system.

So yes, I can confirm these programs exist. At least, based upon the plagiarism reports I received until my last day of active writing at my previous outsourcing company contact.

I know of several essay writing companies that pay a subscription to Copyscape for their plagiarism reviews. The proof of the company they are using and the inefficiency of the program can be found in the plagiarism reports that they submit to their writers as part of the revision requests. These plagiarism reports are taking like the bible by the companies that use them, to the point where they fail to see the flaws in the program and the improper revisions requests that these programs create. The problem with these plagiarism checks is that the companies use them to unfairly penalize their writers. Instead of waiting for a client requested revision, they decide to take it upon themselves to "check" the essay or research and immediately have the writer correct the perceived errors and missing requirements. Since the client has not even seen the paper yet, this request is out of hand and unnecessary. However, the companies continue to use these plagiarism checkers because it helps them pay their writers less, without assuring the students that the paper will be useful in any way because of this plagiarism check practice.

This has gradually turned into a personal pet peeve of mine. Never will I ever work for companies who insist that they are the ones to fully check the essay. One of the better companies that I work for now has been consistent about the idea that, for as long as the clients are happy, there's no reason to penalize the writers. I have been way happier and well-rewarded in this setting, considering that I can communicate directly with my clients should they need anything else from myself. My clients are happy with what I produce, and that should be the only thing that matters. Writing companies, while they certainly serve as mediators, should not take advantage of writers merely because they can, you know?

If one is to believe the media hype about these plagiarism checkers, one would believe that there is absolutely no way a student can turn in a plagiarized paper. All the cross referencing, database analysis, fact checking, these all make it sound like writing an essay or research paper is down to an exact science. Nothing could be further from the truth, Software tends to blunder when it is confused. Offering false positive results for plagiarism checks when unsure of how to deal with commonly used words and sentence formations. Quoted text, properly cited, can never be considered plagiarism, not even in paraphrased form. That's why I find the use of these plagiarism tools a waste of time and money for the universities that use it.