Test 2010: S10-48 Compilatio

Software Profile

ID	S10-48
Product	Compilatio
Company	Compilatio SAS 276 rue du Mont-Blanc 74540 Saint-Félix- France
Web Site	http://www.compilatio.net
Software Type	Online
Costs	No precise information on the website. User license, and credits for the analysis are necessary.
Test Date	2010-09-23

Testoverview

Ranking for all tests:	6
Ranking for tests 10-40:	7
Ranking for tests 31-40:	21
Usability:	9
Professionalism	12
Middle Ranking	11
Effectiveness (Grade):	D
Overall Ranking:	11 barely useful

Compilatio is another new system in our test. This French system conducted an interesting study in 2009 on the prevalence of plagiarism, investigating 235 student papers submitted to the study by their teachers using their system. They report finding 30% of the papers reporting plagiarism, however we are concerned that they did not hand-evaluate the results. We found the system reacting too strongly on very small sequences of characters, for example reporting 1% “plagiarism” for the phrase “Stieg Larsson was born in 1954 in”, and then adding up these 1% hits for a total plagiarism quotient of 11% – this for a document that is 100% original, one that we wrote ourselves. For our older German-language tests the system placed 6th (tied with SafeAssign) with an overall effectiveness of 60%, but for the newer, English-language test cases it was only in 21st place. Although the structure of the system fits nicely into a teacher’s workflow, the annoying tendency to speak French (and to send French emails, even if we had English set as the language) led to a lower usability grade. It would have been ranked with the partially useful systems, if the usability and professionalism index (no name of a contact person given on the web site, many grammar errors on the web site, phone not answered during working hours) had not been so low.