Congratulations! You’ve come far. You’ve written your paper, and now you’re ready to check your work for plagiarism.
Your goal? Guarantee your reputation as an original writer who acknowledges the work of others.
Get to know the Scribbr Plagiarism Report in under three minutes.
You will learn how to interpret the similarity percentage, get some tips to identify potential plagiarism, and find out which settings you can play with to optimize the report.
💡 Note: The video on the right demonstrates the previous version of our Plagiarism Report. To view an example of the updated version, please click here.
The similarity score is your magic number. It tells you what percentage of your work matches sources in the plagiarism database.
Rule of thumb #1: The higher your score, the more likely it is that you need to address unoriginal text.
We call each snippet of text that is found in the plagiarism database a similarity. A similarity can range from a few words within a single sentence to entire paragraphs.
Rule of thumb #2: The higher the similarity, the more likely you’ve plagiarized.
Each similarity corresponds to an original source, which contains the similarity with your text.
Rule of thumb #3: The more familiar the original source looks to you, the higher the chance that you plagiarized.
Does your text include a reference list? Great! However, in this case, it doesn’t matter much.
We ignore your reference list, so it doesn’t influence your similarity score.
Why? Citing your sources does not constitute plagiarism.
Because many students cite their sources according to a specific citation style guide (such as APA), your references may be similar to those used by other students. These similarities are irrelevant.
The Plagiarism Checker does not index or analyze your references. We simply ignore them when comparing your text against the database.
Every academic writer uses quotes. Sometimes, they are necessary for expressing or analyzing your ideas. Properly quoted text does not constitute plagiarism. However, you should always follow these guidelines when quoting text:
The Plagiarism Checker might mark quoted text as similarities. So long as the material is cited, you can ignore these similarities.
You can ignore found similarities if your quotes are properly cited.
Each similarity negatively influences your similarity score. This does not mean that each similarity is considered plagiarism.
You will need to decide on your own if you need to revise your work.
Ask yourself the following questions:
It’s okay if the answer to these questions is yes. However, the more questions you can answer with yes, the more likely it is that you plagiarized and have some work to do to address it.
Is the answer to these questions no? If so, then you can probably ignore the similarity.
When you paraphrase, you rewrite information from a source text in your own words. You use the source to support your own reasoning and argumentation. Paraphrased text should always be cited.
When you quote, you have literally copied the text from a source. You do so to strengthen your argument and to show the words an author has used. Quoted material should always be cited.
If your text matches with the source, then you probably didn’t properly paraphrase the original source. You copied too much of the author’s writing.
You now have two options, depending how similar the text is:
Use our tips to paraphrase like a star. Always cite paraphrased text.
Don’t forget to follow the guidelines for quoting. Make 100% sure you’ve quoted correctly:
Finally, make sure to consistently cite your sources according to your specific citation style, whether it’s APA, Harvard, or Chicago. Are you doubting whether or not you need to cite a source? Then you should probably just do it!
