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About Plagius Percentages

The percentage displayed by Plagius represents the percentage of the text's expressions that were found on some website. This value does not necessarily represent the percentage of plagiarism in the document, but rather how many of its expressions are published on some website.

How the percentage is calculated

The displayed percentage is based on statistical calculations that report the percentage of searched passages that were found on the Internet.

In other words: whenever Plagius finds a passage on the Internet, the total percentage is updated by adding the corresponding value of that passage compared to the whole.

For example: if a paper has 100 words and Plagius finds a 10-word phrase on the Internet, the final percentage displayed will be 10%.

Why does the percentage vary between analyses?

This percentage may vary with each analysis. Several factors can influence the variation:

  • Plagius searches for phrases with randomly defined lengths. Occasionally, a phrase may include a word that was not included in another analysis, affecting the percentage;
  • Plagius searches for phrases across multiple search engines. The engines are selected based on a heuristic that also uses randomness, and the results from these engines are not always the same;
  • Other factors affect the percentage, such as: configured analysis depth, Internet issues, blocked or unavailable websites at the time of analysis, cancellation during analysis, and any configuration differences between one analysis and another.

To minimize percentage variation, we recommend setting the analysis depth to the maximum level, which will reduce fluctuation.

Can I trust the percentage?

The percentage can be very useful when you already know what you are analyzing. It will precisely indicate what was found on the Internet and how much of this percentage could be directly confirmed.

However, it can never be automatically considered a plagiarism index, as this percentage also includes citations in the paper, which are not considered plagiarism.

Only a manual review can confirm the existence of plagiarism.

Modified: 07 jul 2022