Online Tools | Desktop Tools | Web Search Engines | Subscription Databases

• When searching, choose a unique phrase from the suspected text. Unlike the detection tools previously discussed, you cannot upload a complete file to search engines; you must identify a specific string of text to submit.

• Be sure to familiarize yourself with the method to 'phrase search' the tool of your choice. A common method of phrase searching is accomplished by putting your text string in quotations (""). Exact phrase searching can be helpful if you think that the student has copied someone else's words verbatim.

• If you suspect that they may have paraphrased another author, try using Google.com because of its sophisticated search algorithm and page ranking.

• Consider beginning with a powerful search engine or meta-search engine; these tools will access several other web databases and search engines concurrently.

• Follow up this search, by searching Internet directories and online bookstores. Online bookstores sometimes offer extensive book reviews and are crawled by several of the most common search engines.

• Other unique places to search would be in the index of Paper Mills and free online databases of scholarly literature.

• Finding suspected text that may have originated from a discussion groups, Usenet, mailing list and Multi-User Domains (MUDs and MOOs) can be more difficult because electronic discussion has to be archived to be found by most Internet search engines.