Here’s how plagiarism checking works in Content Composer.

1) Look for the plagiarism-check icon, the green check mark, it is third from the right, on the icons toolbar at the top of the page.

2) Click on the icon and Content Composer will run a plagiarism check of your article content. You can also run a plagiarism test by choosing ‘Tools > Check Plagiarism of Article’ from the main toolbar.

That’s it!

Plagiarism checking: behind the scenes

When you run the plagiarism-check tool, Content Composer selects, at random, five sentences from the article’s content and searches on the internet for similar text. After a couple of minutes the results are shown on your monitor and you can immediately see if you have a problem.

If Content Composer’s plagiarism report comes up clean, there will be no links shown. If Content Composer found something that may have been copied from another document, it will display a link to it.

The links shown in the plagiarism checker’s report are to the websites that contained one or more of the randomly chosen sentences. When you click on a link, you will be taken to the web page where the suspicious text was found.

Bear in mind that Content Composer will randomly select five sentences from the article’s content. The chosen sentences can be very complex or very simple. Simpler sentences (such as ‘exercise is healthy’) are more likely to be found as suspicious links, but they are not necessarily plagiarised. In such cases discretion is needed. If an article look suspicious then I’d suggest re-running the test. ContentComposer will select different sentences. If these too bring up duplicated content then it is likely that a chat with the ghostwriter is in order.

From the user’s perspective, this quick management tool can increase confidence in his writers and enables him to maintain high standards within his writing team. Personally, if I find copied material in an article I will confront the writer, inform him of the problem, expect a rewrite and, if the content is of acceptable quality then I’d continue to use the writer; after all, he now knows that I have the tools to keep him honest, I do not need to educate him further.