What does a similarity score of 0% mean?
A similarity score of 0% means that we haven’t found any similarities in your text.
A similarity score of 0% means that we haven’t found any similarities in your text.
If you purchased a Plagiarism Checker in combination with our Proofreading & Editing service, you can start the Plagiarism Checker anytime at your convenience.
Scribbr recommends using the Plagiarism Checker after you have received your document and gone through all of the edits. Then you can upload the most recent version of your paper and avoid having to manually transfer changes from one document to another.
Sometimes the Scribbr Plagiarism Check finds similarities that are not forms of plagiarism, such as references and correctly cited sources. You can exclude these irrelevant similarities from your total similarity score.
Exclude similarities:
Step 1: Open your Plagiarism Check results.
Step 2: Click on the highlighted similarity that you would like to exclude.
Step 3: Click on the “Exclude” button on the right.
The similarity is now excluded from your total similarity score.
If you have excluded multiple sources from your total similarity score, then you might see an error message in your Plagiarism Check results. Unfortunately, this is a problem that we cannot fix at the moment.
If you encounter this issue, you can simply ignore all irrelevant similarities and subtract their score from your total similarity score. This allows you to calculate your actual similarity score by yourself.
At the moment we do not offer an annual subscription for the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker. Plagiarism checks can be bought separately — prices depend on the size of your document.
| Small document (up to 7,500 words) | $18.95 |
|---|---|
| Normal document (7,500-50,000 words) | $28.95 |
| Large document (50,000+ words) | $39.95 |
Yes, if you are interested in buying more than 25 plagiarism checks we can make an offer with a discounted price.
Depending on the size of your request, you will be contacted by a representative of either Scribbr or our partner Turnitin.
Please open our Plagiarism Checker page and click on “Request volume pricing”.
The Scribbr Plagiarism Checker takes about 10 minutes to finish.
For documents larger than 25.000 words it can take a bit longer. You will be shown an estimate at the order overview.
As soon as the check has finished we will also send you an e-mail.
By default, the plagiarism report only shows similarities of 9 words or more.
You can change the minimum length of a similarity yourself in order to exclude small matches from the plagiarism report.
The ideal minimum length of similarities is different per case. In general, we believe that setting the minimum to 8 words, results in too many small similarities that are unlikely to be plagiarism. That’s why the default value is set to 9.
However, if you believe that your document contains many small similarities that are not plagiarism (like these), you can try changing the setting to 10 or 11 to get a more accurate view of the potential plagiarism in your document.
Proceed with caution, since increasing the number might hide potential plagiarism in your report.
1) Click on the gear icon on the top right of the plagiarism report
2) Fill in your desired minimum similarity length
3) Click “Done” to go back to the “Sources overview”
For most people, there is no need to change this value. However, if you want more control over the similarities shown in your report and you think that most of the small similarities are not relevant, you can increase this number.
Please proceed with caution, since increasing this number might hide potential plagiarism in your report. Decreasing the value is not recommended.
If you decrease this number, shorter similarities will be included in the report. This means you will see more similarities and a higher similarity percentage.
However, most of these extra similarities are unlikely to be instances of plagiarism. Short similarities are often the result of common phrases that appear in many different sources.
If you increase this number, only longer similarities will be included in the report. This means you will see fewer similarities and a lower similarity percentage.
Since the similarities are longer, the similarities you now see are more likely to be plagiarism.
However, by excluding the smaller similarities, you might miss some instances of potential plagiarism.
The Scribbr Plagiarism Checker is powered by elements of Turnitin’s Similarity Checker, namely the plagiarism detection software and the Internet Archive and Premium Scholarly Publications content databases.
If you accidentally uploaded the wrong document to the Plagiarism Checker, Scribbr will not refund you for this check or give you a discount for another check. The check starts automatically upon payment, which is why we cannot change your document anymore.
The Scribbr Plagiarism Checker will only check your paper for plagiarism once. Don’t worry – if you have followed our guide, as well as our articles on preventing plagiarism and citing sources, there is no need to perform a second plagiarism check.
Keep in mind that if you try to avoid plagiarism by paraphrasing, you still need to include a reference to the original source.
If you still want to perform a second plagiarism check, you’ll have to buy a new check at the regular price.
Almost all languages are supported by the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker. You can find a complete list of the supported languages below:
The Scribbr Plagiarism Checker is optimized for students, which means that you will receive a detailed report with extra information to fix and prevent plagiarism, similar to the report received by your school.
Schools often have their own database of (prior) theses. Scribbr has no access to those databases. When you copy data from another thesis that is not publicly accessible, the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker will neither be able to detect plagiarism nor identify the source of this data.
However, most theses are actually publicly accessible since many universities and schools have public databases. This means that the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker is able to find these theses.
You can use the following file formats:
The format you use doesn’t influence the final result.
Downloading a PDF of your results is simple. Just follow these two steps:
Review every similarity for plagiarism, and decide whether or not you need to revise your text.
Your similarity score shows you what percentage of your text is found within sources in the comparison database.
For example, if your score is 15%, then 15% of the content you wrote is unoriginal, as it matches text in the database.
You will have to review each similarity and decide whether or not you need to revise your work.
We understand this concern. However, since the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker does not store any documents that it checks in a shared database, it’s impossible for this to happen.
As an added precaution, you can also personally delete your details and documents from Scribbr’s own server as soon as you’ve received the results of your Plagiarism Check.
Your work should not contain any plagiarism. This means that even a score of 1% is too high.
However, contrary to popular belief, plagiarism checkers do not detect plagiarism, but similarities. Not all similarities found by the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker constitute plagiarism. Our check sometimes flags the following:
Because of this, you can generally follow these guidelines:
Even if your score is 1%, you will need to review each similarity and decide whether it’s necessary to revise your work.
No, the Scribbr Plagiarism Check does not result in your document being published in any public database (unlike other plagiarism checker services).
As soon as you’ve received the result from the Plagiarism Checker, you can directly delete all details and documents from the Scribbr server.
The Scribbr Plagiarism Checker, in partnership with Turnitin, compares your document against the largest and fastest-growing content database in the world:
The Scribbr Plagiarism Checker does not have access to Turnitin’s global database with student papers. Only your university can add and compare submissions to this database.
In your plagiarism report you can see the database in which the original source is found.
Sometimes a quote is found in your thesis and marked as a similarity by the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker, because the quote is also found in another source.
A quote found by our plagiarism checker is not a form of plagiarism. However, it is important that you have added a reference to this quote. Below we briefly explain the rules to write down quotes in APA Style.
When citing a section of text fewer than 40 words, you use double quotation marks directly before and directly after the quote. Next to that, you mention the author, the year and a page number.
If the quote contains 40 words or more, then place the quote in a separate block, which begins on a new line and is indented in its entirety.
The second anniversary of Scribbr was widely reported in the press:
Check the article about quoting according to the APA rules for more information.
The Scribbr Plagiarism Checker detect similarities between your paper and a comprehensive database of web and publication content. Because many students write their references in the same way (for instance in APA Style), a plagiarism checker finds many similarities with these sources.
A reference found by the check is not a form of plagiarism. Therefore, there is no need to take action.
You can exclude matches from your reference list in your Plagiarism Check results. However, please be aware that this might not always work, depending on your document.
Step 1: Open your Plagiarism Check results.
Step 2: Click the settings button in the “Sources overview” (see picture below).
Step 3: Select exclude reference list. (see picture below).
Step 4: Click “Done.”
If you’re unable to view the Plagiarism Check results in your browser, please try the following two solutions:
1. Are you using Google Chrome?
We’ve found that using Google Chrome resolves most issues related to the results page. First, try using Google Chrome to open your Plagiarism Check results. If you are already using Google Chrome, or if this solution does not work, then proceed to the second solution.
2. Contact support for a PDF copy of the results.
If the first solution doesn’t work, you can contact our support team via chat or email and request a PDF copy of the results via email. This way, you can still review and process the results. We apologize for the inconvenience.
No worries! This error does not influence the accuracy of your Plagiarism Check results.
If you have inserted a chapter or section title in the header of your document, then you might see an error message in your Plagiarism Check results.
Instead of the title, you will see an error message like the one above. Unfortunately, this is a problem that we cannot fix.
Our check may flag these error messages as similarities. You can ignore these similarities.
No worries! This error does not influence the accuracy of your Plagiarism Check results.
If you have an automatic table of contents and/or list of figures and tables, then you might see an error message instead of the page numbers. The error message might look like this: “Error! Bookmark not defined.”
Unfortunately, this is something we cannot fix. Our check may flag these error messages as similarities. You can ignore these similarities.
Scribbr is specialized in editing study related documents. We check:
At Scribbr, we are committed to protecting your personal information. That’s why our employees and editors follow specific guidelines to ensure the confidentiality of your work:
Both the original and edited versions of your document are saved on our secure server for 12 months. After this period, the files are automatically deleted. However, you can manually delete your files at any time via your user profile.
Tip: If you still have concerns about confidential information in your document, you can take additional measures to anonymize this data. We advise you to do the following:
As a policy, we do not sign NDAs. Every NDA is complex and unique, and our legal team does not have the capacity to review each individual contract we receive.
However, we take extensive measures to protect the confidentiality of your documents. You can learn more about how we handle confidential information on our privacy policy page.
Yes, our editors also work during the weekends and holidays.
Because we have many editors available, we can check your thesis 24 hours per day and 7 days per week, all year round.
If you choose a 72 hour deadline and upload your thesis on a Thursday evening, you’ll have your thesis back by Sunday evening!
