Plagiarism Check for Bachelor Thesis + Examples

A plagiarism check is a software that identifies potential plagiarism in your bachelor thesis. To do this, your document is compared with databases and the internet.

Plagiarism is intellectual theft. Plagiarism occurs when you insert foreign content into your bachelor thesis without making it clear that these are not your own contents.

Example of possible plagiarism in the bachelor thesis

Plagiarism can occur in a bachelor thesis in different forms. So that this doesn't happen in your own work, we have prepared an example: Here, two different plagiarisms are created from an original text about James Bond films. 

Original text

In James Bond films, audiences are shown not only cultural foreignness due to the actions in various regions of the world, but also repeatedly the ability of a traveling agent to successfully deal with cultural alterity [otherness] (Barmeyer & Scheffer).

Plagiarism can occur both consciously and unconsciously in a bachelor thesis. You can understand this with the following two examples.

 

Bachelor thesis as deliberate plagiarism

The author of this work comes to the conclusion: In James Bond films, audiences are shown not only cultural foreignness due to the actions in various regions of the world, but also repeatedly the ability of a traveling agent to successfully deal with cultural alterity [otherness].

The highlighted part was copied from a foreign text without source attribution. Here plagiarism was committed deliberately.

 

Bachelor thesis as unconscious plagiarism

In cultural studies, it is pointed out that audiences in James Bond films due to the actions in various regions of the world are shown not only cultural foreignness, but also repeatedly the ability of a traveling agent to deal with cultural otherness successfully (cf. Barmeyer & Scheffer).

The source attribution "cf." indicates that a foreign text has been paraphrased here. However, the text has hardly been restated in your own words. Therefore, it was not paraphrased correctly. Here there is unconscious plagiarism.

 

How Plagiarism Checking Works

With an online plagiarism check, it is possible to check your bachelor thesis for both deliberate and unconscious plagiarism in three steps.

1. First step: Upload the bachelor thesis
   To start the plagiarism check, you upload the bachelor thesis to the plagiarism check tool. A good plagiarism check allows you to upload documents in ODT, Word, or PDF format.
    
2. Second step: Understanding the result
   After the plagiarism check is complete, you receive a result report. The result report consists of
   • the text of your bachelor thesis, in which all sections with potential plagiarism are marked, which show similarities or matches with other sources.
   • the source overview with links to the identified original texts.
      
3. Third step: Eliminate plagiarism in the bachelor thesis
   Based on the result report, you compare the marked sections step by step with the linked original texts.
   • Was a direct quote marked for which no correct source attribution was created?
     Yes? Then there is plagiarism. To fix the plagiarism, the original source must be cited correctly. Source attribution
   • Was an indirect quote marked that largely matches the original text?
     Yes? Then there is plagiarism. To fix the plagiarism, the content must be sufficiently restated in your own words.
   • Was a common phrasing (e.g. 'the following hypotheses form the basis of the bachelor thesis:') marked?
     Yes? Here there is no plagiarism, because sentences like this occur in many academic works. Therefore, nothing needs to be changed here.

 

The Percentage in the Result Report of the Plagiarism Check

Sometimes common phrasings as well as correct quotes and paraphrases are marked in a plagiarism check. Therefore, it is normal that the proportion of conspicuous passages in the result report is above 0%.

In a bachelor thesis, however, 0% plagiarism is allowed.

Plagiarism Checking of a Bachelor Thesis is Legal

Using a plagiarism check for the bachelor thesis is permitted.

At some universities, students are therefore allowed to use the university's own plagiarism check.

 

Tips to Find the Right Plagiarism Check

The following tips are intended to help you find a good plagiarism check for your bachelor thesis.

Tip 1
Free offers are unsuitable for academic work. They have no access to academic databases. Therefore, academic plagiarism is usually not detected.

Tip 2
Rely on the plagiarism checks from universities. The plagiarism check from GoThesis provides a good first orientation for this.

Tip 3
Pay attention to data protection.

Some free plagiarism checks sell personal data further. It can then be the case that your bachelor thesis ends up on the internet and is found by your university's plagiarism check. GoThesis treats data strictly confidentially and automatically deletes work.

> To the GoThesis plagiarism check