It’s amazing how the internet has helped people all over the world easily find the information they need in just a few clicks. Everything you need to know regardless of the topic you can now find it online.

Thanks to the prolific writers who have contributed to providing useful information on the internet. Unfortunately, not all writers are true to their work. Some simply copy what they read online and claim that it’s their own. But this habit of copying somebody else’s work is definitely not helpful to both students and professionals as it can only adversely affect your standing in school and in your the organization you’re working for. For freelance writers, plagiarism could mean the end of your writing career.

Plagiarism may not be considered a criminal or civil offense but it is an illegal act, explained a San Diego criminal lawyer from SevensLegal. This is because the act violates a person’s intellectual property rights and the person guilty of this can be sued in court for copyright violation.

A study by Pew Research Center has shown that plagiarism is also common among college students. College presidents who took part in the study revealed that 55 percent of college students cheated in their papers and this incident has gone up over the past decade.

If you’re a blog owner or publisher who accepts contributions from freelance writers, it would help to double check the content submitted to you. This way, you can find out if the text was just copied from another site or an original one.

Here are five anti-plagiarism tools you can use for free.

DupliChecker

This tool is absolutely free to use. To use it, all you have to do is simply copy and paste the text and click the search button. An analysis report will then be displayed to you after a few seconds.

Another option is to upload the article, website content or thesis on the site to get results.

PaperRater

PaperRater is more than just a plagiarism checker. It features three tools such as grammar checking, plagiarism detection and writing suggestions.

Created by professionals and graduate students specializing in linguistics, this tool does not cost anything.

Plagium

Plagium is another free tool to help you check duplicate content. To use it, just paste the original portion of the text you want to check and click the search button. A maximum of 250 characters is allowed in the text box.

Plagium is also available in six other languages.

Viper

Viper is free to download and use. It is capable of scanning documents through billions of resources online including academic essays and articles.

Currently, this is available to Microsoft Windows users only.

AntiPlagiarist

AntiPlagiarist is a free downloadable tool that can help you check multiple documents for duplicate content. It supports various file formats such as PDF, plain text, HTML files, Microsoft Word and Word Perfect.

This software is capable of searching the web and has advanced plagiarism detection algorithms to give you the results you desire.

iThenticate

iThenticate is another reliable tool that can help you verify the originality of a written work. It has, so far, checked more than 35 million documents for duplication and attribution. This can be used by students, educators and researchers. Publishers can also make good use of this tool.

Originally posted on January 31, 2015 @ 6:08 am