The Own Sources Checker is an add-on tool that lets you compare your paper with unpublished or private documents. This way you can rest assured that you haven’t unintentionally plagiarized.
Upload or copy-paste the documents that you want to compare with your paper.
Similarities between your paper and the sources you uploaded are highlighted.
Check similarities to avoid plagiarism and make adjustments where necessary.
Forgot to add a source? No problem! You can upload more sources by clicking on the “manage sources” button at the top left corner of your screen.
After the Own Sources Checker has compared your paper to the sources you’ve added, you receive a detailed report. On the left, you see an overview of the number of issues per source. On the right, you see your paper in which similarities are highlighted.
See the total number of issues and a list of all sources.
For each source, you see how many similarities have been detected.
Similarities are highlighted in your text. The color corresponds to the respective source.
Reviewing every similarity is important to make sure you have not committed unintentional plagiarism. Follow the steps below to review and resolve all issues.
Not every similarity is plagiarism. Ask yourself:
If the answer to this question is “Yes,” then this similarity probably does not constitute plagiarism.
If the answer is “no,” and you have copied or adapted someone else’s words or ideas, you should correctly credit the source.
Using someone else’s words or ideas is fine, but you need to credit the source. You should either quote or paraphrase the original text.
Paraphrasing means formulating someone else’s ideas in your own words, without changing the meaning of the original text. Even when you paraphrase, you should cite the source.
Quoting means copying someone else’s words without changing them. A quote is placed in quotation marks and accompanied by an in-text citation.
The Own Sources Checker is temporarily free in combination with the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker (normally $14.95).
You can use the following file formats:
If you have a document in a different file format, we recommend converting it to docx or pdf and then uploading it as a source.
No, it is not possible to change your original document. However, you can add, remove, and change as many sources as you want.
Here’s how it works:
Click the download icon at the bottom right of your screen.
The Scribbr Plagiarism Checker compares your document against the largest content database in the world. It will detect any similarities with documents in that database.
However, you might be unsure if all of the sources you used are in that database – for example, because some of your sources are unpublished. In this case, you can make use of our Own Sources Checker. Here you can add all the sources you want to a private database and compare them with your own document.
You can add up to 25 sources at a time to the Own Sources Checker. If you want to add other sources as well, you need to remove others first.
