S19-05-PlagScan

Software Profile

Number	S19-05
Product	PlagScan
Company	Address: PlagScan GmbH, Subbelrather Strasse 15, 50823 Cologne, Germany Email: info@plagscan.com Phone: +49 221 75988994
Web-Site	https://www.plagscan.com/
Software-Type	Online, integrations with Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard Open LMS, LTI and other learning management systems via API
Costs (04.05.2020.)	Private Plans: 4,99 € – 39,99 € Schools (K-12): 249 € – 699 € Higher Education: Campus / Department Licenses (contact sales) Business: 15,99 € – 20,99 € / month Large Enterprises: (contact sales)
Test Date	November 2018 – November 2019

Description

PlagScan presents itself as a plagiarism checker. It is operated by the German company PlagScan GmbH and was launched in 2009. They state that they have more than 1,500 organizations as customers. Although they focus on higher education, high schools, and businesses, PlagScan is also available for single users. They search the internet using MS Bing, published academic articles, their so-called “Plagiarism Prevention Pool”, and optionally a customer’s own database. PlagScan offers multiple pricing plans for each type of customer, there are apparently also now options for a free trial.

Pros & Cons

System found some similarities in translations from English to German and Slovak to Czech languages.
It is possible to download both PDF reports and detailed Word document files with similar text sources in comment section (see in screenshots).
This system did not find any similarities in multi source documents in Slovak language, but found most of similarities in English multi source documents.
It has low results for finding similarities in documents with texts from online articles in Czech, Slovak and Turkish languages.

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