Yabatech Acquires World-Class Security Software for Detecting Plagiarism

One of Nigeria’s foremost Schools, Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech) just announced that it has acquired a state-of-the-art security software that is capable of detecting plagiarism or copyright infringements in the write-ups submitted by its students and lecturers.

YABATECH Acquires Software for Detecting Plagiarism https://t.co/unz1EzrPvn pic.twitter.com/qHIu0lq6pG

— Lagschools (@lagschools) June 29, 2018

This was made known by Mr. Lateef Fagbemi, Chairman, Governing Council of the college while speaking on “Plagiarism and its Legal Implications Within Academic Environments: Consequences on the Institutions and Offender” at the 11th International Science, Technology, Education, Arts, Management and Social Sciences (iSTEAMS) Conference held in the Lagos  this week, according to Nigeriacommunicationsweek.

Plagiarism is the “wrongful appropriation” and “stealing and publication” of another author’s “language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions” and the representation of them as one’s own original work.

The software, according to Fagbemi, is able to detect even the slightest act of plagiarism and copyright infringement with which the college is confident that products and final works of students would of more quality and genuine.

He also added that educational institutions must step up the quality control mechanisms and academic papers submitted by writers must be thoroughly checked to detect a possibility of plagiarism. Fagbemi insisted that relevant software must be acquired by Nigerian institutions to detect any possible case of plagiarism and be able to nip it in the bud.

How Does a Plagiarism Software Work?

Generally, a plagiarism software tools (checker) would use a complex set of instructions to search for the most relevant instances of plagiarism within a work or document. It does this by scanning uploaded documents to build a huge collection of various words, context or sentences. After which, it scans through the Internet or its own database comparing results word for word to deliver a plagiarism report in which similarities are spotted from the original source.

With recent significant enhancement in technology, world-class plaigiarism checkers are able to perform LSA (Latent Semantic Analysis). This means they can now identify the synonyms, antonyms, analyse the overall relationship, as well as the context of which the text is being used.

Anti plagiarism softwares in the Internet era could be a good solution, though https://t.co/gWq3sVH2Jm

— Denita Cepiku (@DenitaCepiku) October 27, 2017

Plagiarism, which in itself is not a crime, is considered an academic/ethic misconduct (leading to copyright infringement). In a society like ours where plagiarism is pervasive, not only in tertiary institutions but also in other intellectual areas, this is a good initiative in curbing the menace.