Unicheck is a cloud-basedplagiarism detectionsoftware that finds similarities, citations and references in texts. Unicheck is primarily used in K-12 and higher education, and is utilised by more than 400 institutions worldwide. The tool is also used as a stand-alone checker by individual users like writers, editors, bloggers and lawyers.
Unicheck offers search and recognition functionality for similarities, citations, and references in texts. It can also discover characters that have been replaced in the text from another alphabet — for example, similar characters from the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. To find similarities and paraphrases, checks are performed against the Internet, open sourcerepositories, and user's internal library or database. The check results are presented as a similarity report, where each of the similarities that have been found has a link to the source. These reports can be downloaded as PDF documents. Unicheck can be used as a stand-alone online tool, or integrated into an LMS via plugin, LTI, API or LTI+API types of integrations. Unicheck is compatible with the following file formats:.doc,.docx,.rtf,.txt,.odt,.ppt,.pptx,.html,.pdf,.pages,.gdoc, as well as rar and zip archives, and files uploaded from Google Drive, oneDrive and Dropbox. Unicheck allows users to store documents in their internal library. Global settings allow adjustment of check sensitivity and enable users to choose whether they want to share their checked documents with Unicheck's database. Each newly signed up user receives 5 trial pages.
Technology
Unicheck uses an algorithm that searches for similar text on web pages, in open source repositories, and in the user's internal library. Accuracy of search is achieved by using the algorithm that divides text into small shifting sequences and uses them to look for similarities and by using live web index, which enables checks against all web pages. The technology was developed by computer science engineers and professors. In 2017, the technology was improved by adding NLP principles. This enabled the system to recognise synonyms and find paraphrased content in the checked text. The algorithm has been compared to latent semantic indexing, a method used by Google to determine connections between words and phrases. The technology can recognise citations and references in the text, given they are properly formatted according to any of the academic styles. Currently, the technology recognizes APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and Harvard styles. The speed of checks per page is 4 seconds.
Integrations
Unicheck has developed the following types of integrations with Learning Management Systems : Plugin Plugin integration is characterised by enriching LMS functionality with added features of the tool, without changing native interface. This type of integration is used with Moodle and Sakai LMS. LTI LTI integration is characterised by a completely new interface created within the LMS to enable Unicheck's functions. Unicheck developed this type of integrations for Canvas, Moodle, Schoology, Blackboard, and NEO LMS. API When this type of integration is used, the two systems, that of LMS and Unicheck, are connected by API to ensure their interaction. API works through determining the functionality of the system, at the same time disregarding the way that functionality is realised. Through this type of interaction, Unicheck integrates with Google Classroom. LTI+API This is a special type of integration that takes principles of both API and LTI to create a native integration, that is presenting Unicheck's functions in the native interface of LMS. This type of integration is only available for Canvas LMS.
