Academic decency is the cornerstone of an effective educational process and the default requirement for any assignment. Teaching students to develop critical mindset and come up with original ideas is a significant responsibility for an educator, and it is important for professors to find the balance between coaching and policing their students. Technology today allows checking whether a student’s paper is original, but there is still work for educators to determine the academic decency of their students.

False positive similarity in text

A false positive result in plagiarism check report means that a text is marked as plagiarized or matching with one found online. However, the phrasing may match out of context. The materials that may appear in a false positive report are common phrases, widely discussed topics, or assignment details that other students receive. Determining that a positive result is false may be easy if the words and phrases it flags are common. However, it may be challenging if the checker highlights something more specific and unreferenced. So, instructors should analyze each case individually instead of blindly relying on the check results.

False negative similarity in text

A false negative similarity result is the other side of the same problem in plagiarism detection. It occurs when the plagiarism-checking software does not flag the text that was actually plagiarized. This can happen for multiple reasons. One of the tricks students sometimes resort to is translating the borrowed material, which makes it more challenging for algorithms to detect copying. The software may not have access to certain books or materials as they were not published online or the tool cannot access the publication. Another reason leading to the false negative result is paraphrasing. While proper paraphrasing is acceptable, using AI tools for rewriting the material counts as academic cheating and can complicate similarity detection for plagiarism checking tools.

How PlagiarismCheck.org works

PlagiarismCheck.org is a tool that helps educators to estimate the originality of students’ writing and to detect similarity with other written works. The technology takes into account the possibility of false positive or negative results, and includes repository records of the institution.

can plagiarism checker be wrong

The tool aims to minimize the possibility of obtaining false results. The checker marks fully matching text and cited text differently, which also helps to track the appropriate referensing of the sources used. So, technology today can become a great helper for professors in their defense of academic decency. However, it is important to remember that no tool is 100% accurate. Hence, it is necessary both to analyze flagged text and to check the coherence of the unflagged one. Try PlagiarismCheck.org and get a detailed report on alleged plagiarism!

PlagiarismCheck.org provides effective solutions for teachers, students, and content creators. Scan for plagiarism and try our AI text detector now!