Software Profile | Description | Pros & Cons | Coverage results | Usability results | Screenshots
Software Profile
| Number | S19-04 |
| Product | PlagAware |
| Company | Address: Brumersweg 35/1 89233 Neu-Ulm Germany Email: info@plagaware.com Phone:+49 731 9214329 |
| Web-Site | https://www.plagaware.com/ |
| Software-Type | Online |
| Costs (04.05.2020.) | Credit Packet: from 12,99 € University/School License: from 189.99 € Yearly Company License: from 89,99 € Monthly Subscription: from 2,99 € |
| Test Date | November 2018 – November 2019 |
Description
PlagAware is operated by a German private company, PlagAware Unternehmergesellschaft (haftungsbeschränkt). PlagAware states that it has 39,000 active users, and focuses on a wide range of customers—universities, schools and businesses, that are offered institutional licenses, and individuals, who can use purchased credits for individual checks of documents. They promise to perform the comparison with 10 billion online documents and reference texts provided by the user.
Pros & Cons
- PlagAware system has very high results after testing multi source documents for all languages finding similarities in copied text and text with words replaced with synonyms.
- System found some similarities in translation from English to German and Slovak to Czech languages.
- This system has low results in finding similarities in texts from online articles in Czech, Slovak, Latvian and Turkish languages.
- While uploading new document in section where user need to verify the document, one button is not translated in English (Bearbeiten (DE)), some messages in other views are shown in German as well.
- Are mentioned amount of „hidden sources“, but not shown detailed information about them.
- During file upload for testing, user can type the name for the report, but for PDF reports the chosen name is not used, user needs to type it again for report download.
- PlagAware only has an answering machine taking calls, but will respond to emails.
Coverage results
Single source
Multi source
Usability results
Workflow process usability
- Can upload and test multiple documents together
- Auto-fill metadata for documents
- The system uses original file names for report
- There are no word limit for the testing document
- The system display text in the chosen language only
- The system can process large documents (for example, a bachelor thesis)
Result presentation usability
- Reports are downloadable
- Results are saved in the user’s account and can be reviewed afterwards
- Matched passages are highlighted in the online report
- Matched passages are highlighted in the downloaded report (offline)
- Evidence of similarity is demonstrated side-by-side with the source in the online report
- Evidence of similarity is demonstrated side-by-side with the source in the downloaded report
- Document formatting is not changed in the report
- Document page numbers are shown in the report
- The report is not spoiled by false positives
Other usability aspects
- System costs are clearly stated in the system homepage
- Information about a free system trial version is advertised on the web-page
- The system can be integrated as an API to a learning management system
- The system can be integrated with the Moodle platform
- The system provides call support
- The call support is provided in English
- English is properly used on the website and reports
- There are no external advertisements
Screenshots
Main page 
Login page 
Document upload 
Result page 
Online report 
Downloaded report
Company Statement
(A contribution was promised, but still has not arrived.)
