iThenticate Checks for Plagiarism & More

iThenticate Checks for Plagiarism & More

First, a story. A couple months ago, Amazon contacted me after I uploaded an eBook. The concern was that too much of my book appeared online (anything over 10% of total content gets flagged). Amazon, quite rightly, wanted assurances that the content was mine. The rather pointed email also demanded to know why so much of the book was available in the public domain. Yikes!

The trick with Amazon is that you aren't dealing with real people who you can query for an explanation about what content is at issue or where it resides. I was at a loss to provide an explanation. In the meantime, Amazon locked my book from being for sale. Double Yikes! My research began damn fast, and within an hour, it became apparent that the best solution to identify what was online, and where, was iThenticate.

The company comes with excellent references and reviews, i.e. it is both effective and ethical, a firm in good standing even in the picky academic arena where I work. Within another hour, I'd uploaded my book, run it through iThenticate's processes and could easily see what appeared and who was running content from my book. It turns out that several "issues" were with my own WordPress blogs where I was promoting the book for Amazon (Amazon, of course, does not discriminate whose sites are involved or for what purpose).

In addition, some other blogs had picked up review content, so, indeed, there was quite a bit online, so Amazon was correct...the snag was that Amazon was of no help in pinpointing specific concerns -- it just demands answers and fixes, all via email.

iThenticate can do for you what it did for me. And since my document was less than 25,000 words, the cost was only $50...a very good expenditure, well worth it. The vetting software is straight forward once you're into it; showing you clearly what content is at question and where it appears. In one case, I contacted a blogger to request that he correct the source of my book since he'd credited it to someone else entirely.

You can run a book or document through five times; each time you do, and as you make changes, the subsequent run through reveals a lesser percentage showing up online. I had to rewrite quite a bit of content because I had no way to force other websites to take my content down. Several book review sites were running content without permission, but I didn't know this until iThenticate showed me where it was.

It took a day, but the book got reinstated for sale. Through the process, I learned a valuable lesson about how fast and far copyrighted content can spread online. I subsequently recommended to Amazon that all authors submitting books should be required to have them vetted by a company such as iThenticate. Any serious author should be prepared to spend a reasonable sum to ensure that content is original and to know where else it may reside in the cyber world.

iThenticate can provide peace of mind to authors, and that's worth more than money.      

Here is relevant information taken from iThenticate's website, plus a URL to get there for more info:

• "Verify the originality of your writing against the largest comparison database of scholarly and published works.
• Use of the same database utilized by publishers to check for plagiarism.
• Upload documents and see user-friendly results within minutes!
• Compare your document side-by-side with the original content sources.

Extensive Document Comparison to Check for Plagiarism

"iThenticate's online plagiarism checker software will compare the text of your document against its extensive database, which is the world's largest comparison database for scholarly and other professional documents.

"The online plagiarism checker database is comprised of three parts:

1.  Partnerships with major aggregators and content providers
2. A CrossCheck service in partnership with CrossRef in which leading publishers that have deposited millions of scholarly content items
3. iThenticate's own web crawler..."

See the company's website: http://www.ithenticate.com/