Dear All, Thanks for carrying on the thread of discussions about our experience about the available anti-plagiarism web tools courtesy Inflibnet. iThenticate has a very steep pricing policy. On an average anti-plagiarism check carried on each page is costing around $4 (i.e. ₹250-300). The cost will multiply each time we repeat the check on a particular document if the plagiarism score is beyond the acceptable threshold. Further, iThenticate has a policy to calculate 50 pages as one complete document. However, if a thesis has smaller chapters, say 06 (each of less than 30 pages), yet the software will calculate it as six document. Therefore, if we purchase iThenticate our allowed document limit is sure to be exhausted too soon. As the service was till now free through Inflibnet we never thought regarding this aspect. On the other hand, Turnitin is a bit slower than iThenticate with a layer of initial planning which makes it less popular with the users. But the Turnitin allows us to upload any number of documents (with a size limit of 400 pages) under one ID. The very useful feature with these two tools marketed in India by Balani Infotech is the availability of 'Setting'. We are free to configure the environment to our preference. We can direct the software not to count the quoted materials, to exclude materials & methods chapter, etc. We are still in the dark about the parameters that the Inflibnet has used in its global tender for selecting a worthy/less worthy alternative to the the earlier anti-plagiarism web tools. Urkund has no feature of 'setting' and it is even counting all the properly quoted texts. Whereas one can directly upload file/s in Turnitin/iThenticate, we have to attach a file through email and send it to a given address for generating the analysis report which is made available after a lapse of few hours through the inbox of the administrator. Another drawback that Urkund share with Turnitin is that both these software welcome single file format for the whole work, In case of Urkund if you attach multiple files, this software will generate report for only the first uploaded. Therefore, we are forced to create two files- one for the summary and conclusion and another for the rest of the thesis- and send it separately via email as attachments to meet our University anti-plagiarism policy. More problems may tumble down after a fair degree of use at different institutions. With kind regards, Dr. T. Shahab HMS Central library, Jamia Hamdard University New Delhi On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 6:16 PM, Kodandarama wrote:

Dear all, We at University of Mysore have scanned about 450 PhD Theses using Turnitin and iThenticate plagiarism check tools. Thanks to UGC-INFLIBNET, particularly its Director Dr. Jagadish Arora and Scientist Mr. Manoj for making these tools available free for all those universities who have signed an MoU for Shodhaganga. Our experience endorses the views expressed by Dr. T. Shahab. These two popular tools cross check over 45 billion web pages, 337 million students’ papers and 130 million additional articles for similarity and return the results in seconds showing the matches. While we have little experience with URKUND software, its accompanying literature shows that it cross checks collection of 11.5 million student’s papers only. As is evident from its Website URKUND is used mainly in Swedish institutions, as against adoption of Turntin and iThenticate world over. We get a serious doubt that URKUND may be cross checking mainly Swedish student’s paper. More importantly URKUND doesn’t return the results immediately, but are forwarded to e-mail of administrator. Checking the texts put as image/ table and identifying water marked texts is also important for checking plagiarism. While this is possible with Turnitin/iThenticate, I have a doubt about URKUND about this capability.

While the friendliness of the software is one of the criteria for selection, most important ones are other functionalities and databases or the content size used for cross checking the similarity, because very purpose of this sort tools and the exercise we do is to check plagiarism. Even by using Turnitin and iThenticate tools we will not be cross checking thousands of proceedings and Volumes of Conference Papers unless published by well known publishers and available on Internet. This being the case we should go for the ones covering more content for cross checking.

Yes, cost is one of main factors for our concern. Individual universities would have shared cost either partially or fully depending upon the situation. Since UGC has mandated it and some State Governments like that of Karnataka have made it compulsory it should not be a problem for getting funds from universities authorities. Some of the universities and even engineering colleges have started charging students for Plagiarism check and issuing a certificate since it is mandatory. At this juncture since INFLIBNET has already gone for URKUND, either can use it or we can license Turnitin/iThenticate locally if we desire so. Those who have access to both can come up with their experiences of using both and help us in deciding the software in future. These are basically my personal opinions based on my experience and observation. WE need to have better evaluation and more discussion before we come to a final discussion.

Regards Kodandarama Temporary Assistant Librarian University Library, Manasagangothri Mysore

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