10 Tools to Combat Online Plagiarism

The growing need for quality content on the internet has led to rampant plagiarism, and for today’s word thieves, stealing the text you worked hard to create or paid good money for can be as easy as cutting and pasting.

Thankfully, innovation in the last few years has given rise to a batch of outstanding tools that can identify, track, and stop this trend. Here are 10 free tools to combat online plagiarism. The more aggressively you put them to use, the more secure your online content will be, and the better chance you’ll have of catching the thieves and putting a stop to their activities.

1. Bad Behavior: Since stopping plagiarism before it starts is the best solution, this prevention tool is growing in popularity. It works with all PHP-based internet software and is compatible with most CMS platforms. In addition to stopping spam, it is effective in preventing automated plagiarism by capturing unauthorized bots that are found visiting your web pages.

2. PictureShark:With this prevention tool you can easily stamp text or watermark images on your image files. Batch watermarking is quick and easy, and the watermark is impossible to remove. You choose the text or logo, and customize it with a selection of quality effects.

3. Watermark.ws: If you’ve already got images online, and don’t want the hassle of adding a watermark and reloading them to the web, try Watermark.ws. This tool walks you through three simple steps to overlay your copyrighted pictures with fully customized text or logos, removing the incentive for stealing them.

4. Copyscape: If you can’t prevent plagiarism, the best thing is to detect it as soon as possible. This duplicate content detection software was the first of its kind, and is the leading detection tool available today. It quickly searches the web for plagiarized portions of all your pages, and can find them in places standard Google/Google Alerts searches may miss. This dependable tool is the go-to choice of writing services and webmasters in detecting when their content has been ripped off.

5. Google Alerts: Used to track all kinds of news and information online, Google alerts will also track your content, and detail when and where it shows up. Type in selected search terms, usually unique phrasing from your work, and let Google Alerts do the monitoring for you.

6. Maxpower Digital Fingerprint Plug-In: This plug-in for WordPress is a detection tool that’s growing in use by those with RSS feeds. It adds an identifying key or phrase to the end of each post in your RSS feed – the fingerprint, and provides you with powerful tools to search for that fingerprint online.

7. Google Image Search: The best way to stop plagiarism of your images is to give them unique file names that can be searched, so you’ll know where they turn up without your permission. Unless the image thief goes to the trouble of changing the file name before putting it on their site, duplicate use it easily tracked.

8. Copyfeed: Once plagiarism has been detected, putting an end to it is the name of the game. Copyfeed is a plug-in that should become standard equipment for all WordPress users. It offers a complete digital tool box including a fingerprint to aid in detection of copyright theft. In addition, is has the ability to capture the IP address of any RSS scrapers in the posts, which can then be banned from your feeds.

9. Domain Tools: When plagiarism has been identified, it simply must be reported. Only with ongoing, aggressive reporting will the trend start to slow. Domain Tools allows you to immediately find out who the host is of any website, and also the server and its operator.

10. Registered Commons: This tool enables you to prove the work in question is yours, and that is vital should a dispute over the copyright ensue. Your registered work is given a serial number and is time stamped and fingerprinted for authenticity.

For years, victims of online plagiarism felt helpless to do anything about it. Those days are over! These tools, if diligently employed, give you what you need to prevent plagiarism and to fight back when it occurs. While plagiarism will continue online, consistent prevention, monitoring, detection, and reporting will keep it from victimizing you in the future.

Guest Article : This is a guest post from Tom Walker, a UK based designer and writer working with an online store offering Phaser toner cartridges and other printing tools for creatives. You can read his other posts about design and art on CreativeCloud.