Forms of Plagiarism
- Direct plagiarism: Copying text verbatim without citation.
- Mosaic plagiarism: Piecing together phrases without attribution.
- Self-plagiarism: Reusing your own published text without disclosure.
- Idea plagiarism: Presenting someone else's concept as your own.
How Plagiarism Checkers Work
Tools like iThenticate compare your manuscript against billions of web pages and published articles. The similarity score alone is not a verdict — context must be interpreted.
Acceptable vs. Problematic Similarity
Most journals consider overall similarity below 15–20% acceptable if matches are properly attributed. Any continuous passage of 5+ words copied without attribution is potentially problematic regardless of overall score.
Boss Statistics Plagiarism Support
We provide pre-submission similarity checks and help researchers paraphrase and properly cite flagged passages.