Website Articlechecker.com makes it easier than ever for teachers to catch plagiarism. In the past I have used Google to find the sources of what I thought to be plagiarized text. Articlechecker takes this to the next level. It’s easy to use interface has a couple of quality features that deserve pointing out.

There are two ways to input text. The first is by using the large text box area on the main page by typing in the text manually. It’s handy for quick spot checks. Notice that the choices below give three search engines to choose from. You can select all or one of them to compare with the entered text. Usually within seconds you will have your results.

The second method is by uploading entire documents. This can be done by hitting up the browse button and selecting the paper of choice from your hard drive. I would like to see more file type flexibility here since it only accepts .txt files, but it is still a lot quicker than entering the paper by hand. (By the way, most papers turned in by students are going to be .doc files. You can convert these to .txt in Word by opening the file and saving it in the .txt format.)

Notice that your results show a percentage for how much of the text matches another document. It has contains links to the page so that you can check it out for yourself.

Use another program for plagiarism detection? Hit us up with some comments.