As one of many plagiarisms checkers online, Scribbr offers a fast and intuitive way for students and others to check their papers for plagiarism. But how does it stack up to other plagiarism checkers and how thorough is it when compared to others? We do a deep dive into the Scribbr plagiarism checker to see how it compares to other online plagiarism checkers.
Checking for plagiarism isn’t just something you leave behind after completing your academic career. Checking for plagiarism is important to not only give credit to the thoughts and ideas of their original authors but it also helps you as a writer or content creator to mold and shape your own thoughts and properly attribute the content of others, giving them credit where credit is due.
Scribbr, like many online plagiarism checkers, is a platform that is centered around academic writing and helps students to improve their papers by offering writing and grammar suggestions. Much like Grammarly and other tools, it offers a number of suggestions that can help students to better express themselves in their writing, including properly citing their sources and avoiding paraphrasing others when trying to express others’ ideas and findings.
Scribbr offers a number of valuable services to students who are looking to improve their writing, including:
Citation and Reference Formatting – Scribbr provides students with detailed references on how to properly format their papers according to MLA and APA standards, saving valuable time while ensuring that information is properly cited in research papers, essays, theses, and more.
Editing and Proofreading Services – Scribbr’s professional editors help students improve their writing through dedicated editing and proofreading for grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes as well as sentence structure and flow.
Online Plagiarism Checker -Scribbr’s plagiarism checker, the focus of this review, checks for similarities between documents and highlights potential areas where content could be plagiarized.
Scribbr’s plagiarism checker scans documents and checks for similarities with already published materials (both online and in academic journals, publications, and other databases) to locate potential plagiarism. Scribbr’s plagiarism checker is powered by Turnitin, a well-known academic plagiarism checker.
Because Turnitin is focused heavily on integrating within academic institutions and is not available as a service that students can simply sign up for, Scribbr offers access to the Turnitin tool along with other helpful tools for students who may not have access to Turnitin at their school or university.
Like other online plagiarism checkers, Scribbr’s plagiarism checker scans documents from its considerable database of websites, academic journals, and much more and highlights matching text as well as provides a report that indicates how similar a given text is to another. It also links to the original source so that students can check the highlighted portions of their text and make edits on a case-by-case basis.
Scribbr’s plagiarism checker offers numerous benefits to students looking to check their work for plagiarism, including:
Proper Citation – By helping students properly cite their work according to MLA or APA standards, Scribbr teaches them how to avoid plagiarism by not only citing ideas and quotes that are not their own, but strengthening their own writing and helping them to improve the expression of their own ideas.
Academic Integrity – In many cases, students don’t intend to plagiarize and instead paraphrase information from various sources. Scribbr helps them maintain their academic integrity by highlighting areas where text could be too similar to an already-expressed idea or concept and giving them the flexibility to address the issues and fix them before submitting their paper.
Saving Time – Scribbr checks work in seconds as opposed to going through a variety of documents manually to find areas where content could be plagiarized.
Compared to other plagiarism checkers, including Grammarly, Chegg, and Originality.AI, Scribbr’s plagiarism checker offers numerous benefits. Because it draws upon a variety of sources, it goes beyond web-based plagiarism checkers like CopyScape which only look at web pages. Scribbr pulls from academic journals and other sources. It claims to scan over 99 billion web pages and 8 million other publications.
However, it’s important to note that Scribbr’s plagiarism checker is powered by the same technology as Turnitin, therefore if you have access to Turnitin through your school or university, Scribbr essentially offers scans of the same quality along with some additional paid options.
Scribbr’s plagiarism checker algorithm, through Turnitin, works by comparing document text with its comprehensive database of online and offline sources. Through its algorithm, it identifies potential matches and similarities between text and allows the writer to note proper citations and references, minimizing the chance of false positives during the similarity analysis.
It works first by analyzing your document, breaking it down into smaller pieces, and comparing those chunks with its database sources. It then looks for exact matches, partial matches, and content that has been paraphrased.
After each chunk has been analyzed, the Scribbr algorithm calculates a similarity percentage, which is a percentage that matches text in its database of sources. It displays this number in the plagiarism report. If desired, it will let you exclude citations and references to help prevent false positives and prevent properly cited information from being erroneously flagged as plagiarism.
To use the Scribbr plagiarism checker, follow these steps:
In order to get the most out of Scribbr, it’s important to look at it as a learning tool rather than a direct “plagiarism finder”, as it cannot find every possible instance of plagiarism. It’s ideal for checking that you’ve properly cited your quotes and references and that the information you’ve paraphrased is accurate.
You can also combine the Scribbr plagiarism checker with other paid tools offered by the site such as editing and proofreading to check your work for proper grammar, punctuation, spelling, and more to help improve the overall quality of your work.
In some cases, you may run into technical hiccups with Scribbr. Some users complain of slow load times, but if you’ve uploaded or pasted a particularly large document (like a thesis), it will take time for Scribbr to break it down into manageable pieces and scan it.
False positives (or false negatives) are also an issue. Sometimes it flags content as plagiarized when it isn’t or vice versa. Review flagged content carefully in the report and compare it to the original sources that Scribbr has identified. You can have Scribbr’s algorithm exclude properly-cited quotations and references, reducing the chance of false positives.
Should you have other problems such as errors in the plagiarism report or trouble logging in, you should contact Scribbr’s customer service and provide them with the information they’ll need to solve the issue.
As with any plagiarism tool, Scribbr has its own pros and cons which you should be aware of before you decide to use it:
Additional Academic Services – Scribbr offers more than just a plagiarism checker. It also offers paid academic services including editing and proofreading which can be beneficial to students who want to improve their writing skills.
A Large and Detailed Database – Scribbr’s extensive database of 99 billion web pages and 8 million different publications makes it easy to scan a variety of documents for plagiarism.
Intuitive User Interface – Scribbr’s user interface is very intuitive to use, even for first-time users.
Greater Customizability – Scribbr gives users the ability to customize the settings of the plagiarism checker such as selecting their citation style, excluding references, and setting thresholds for the similarity index.
Cost: Scribbr’s services are not free, and the plagiarism checker is priced per document, which can make scans quite pricey compared to other online plagiarism checkers.
Database-Dependent Accuracy- Scribbr’s, and by extension, Turnitin’s accuracy is heavily dependent on the user’s ability to properly cite their references as well as the contents of the databases that it checks against.
Limited Language – Scribbr only currently works with English-language documents which can limit its usefulness.
False Positives and Negatives – You may need to fine-tune the similarity checker in order to avoid false positives and negatives. Keep in mind that there is no tool currently available that can detect all instances of plagiarism.
There are a number of Scribbr alternatives on the market which provide a more cost-effective or more targeted option for students and professionals alike looking to check their work for plagiarism.
Turnitin’s plagiarism checker is the brains behind Scribbr’s own checker. Since Turnitin is mainly used in academic settings by colleges and universities, your school may already have access to its plagiarism checker. Turnitin works with a number of Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard and allows students and educators alike to check work from within a familiar and secure environment.
Copyscape is a well-known plagiarism checker that primarily focuses on website plagiarism. It works via a credit system and scans billions of web pages looking for direct text matches. It is primarily designed to check website content and as such is used more by content professionals than educators and students.
Originality.AI uses the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect not only instances of plagiarism but also AI-written content. Users can opt to scan for one or the other or both. Originality works on a credit-based system with credits costing as little as one cent per 100 words scanned.
Originality.AI is one of the newest and most advanced online plagiarism checkers. It can scan for both plagiarism and content written by AI tools and displays a percentage of each (or one of the other) through a comprehensive report.
Both Originality.AI and Scribbr are two different approaches to the same problem. Scribbr, through Turnitin’s engine, scans a wide range of web pages and academic journals in its database, but cannot detect AI-written content. On the other hand, Originality.AI, which scans multiple content databases and optionally checks for AI-written content, provides a more thorough scan at a fraction of the price of Scribbr.
Originality.AI’s algorithm uses a combination of machine learning, statistical analysis, NLP techniques, and string matching to look for similarities in the text as well as entire phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. It consistently learns and improves as AI writing tools improve, consistently learning from and drawing upon patterns and insights from the training data it is given.
If you need support beyond a plagiarism checker, including editing and proofreading support, Scribbr’s services may be useful to you. However, it’s worth checking to see if your school or university is already using Turnitin’s academic tools with their LMS before you pay for Scribbr. If you’d rather check for plagiarism and originality while keeping your content engaging and human-sounding, Originality.AI can help you better tune your content to resonate with your readers. With pricing as low as one cent per 100 words, Originality.AI is a fast, intuitive, and highly-detailed way to scan for plagiarism and AI-written content through a simple, streamlined dashboard that’s both comprehensive and continually learning. Try Originality.AI for yourself and see how easy it is to judge the quality of your content while keeping it original and plagiarism-free.