From 17 October a new plagiarism detection system will be available in both Canvas and as stand alone application. A tender resulted in the selection of the application SimCheck, from the vendor Turnitin. By moving to SimCheck the previously mentioned limitations of the current plagiarism detection in Canvas will be eliminated. One of the improvements is that SimCheck also searches in a large number of scientific publications. More information about the use of SimCheck can be found at the website Educational Systems.
During the implementation of SimCheck we will phase out the other plagiarism detection systems that are being used at UT. The content of the UT databases within Ephorus and Urkund will be imported into SimCheck. Since the implementation of SimCheck takes place in the middle of a quartile, Urkund will remain available as well until 11 November. For new assignments however we advise to use SimCheck as of 17 October.
The similarity scores of submitted Urkund assignments remain visible in the course after 11 november and the similarity reports will also remain accessible until two years after submission.
Important for courses starting in quartile 2, 3 or 4: did you have assignments with Urkund plagiarism detection in your 2018-course, that you want to import in your 2019-course? Then don’t forget to change the plagiarism review setting to ‘SimCheck’. Because that will not happen automatically.
Employees who currently have an account for stand alone use of Ephorus/Turnitin will be contacted by email about switching to the stand alone version of SimCheck.
Background
On 30 August 2018 we published a news message describing the situation at that time of using plagiarism detection at UT. The news messages states that UT was participating in the SURF tender for a plagiarism detection system. Last December the decision was made to no longer take part in this national tender and to conduct our own tender for a plagiarism detection system. For this tender we have received one submission that complies with our requirements, i.e. the application SimCheck from the vendor Turnitin.
