If your school uses G Suite for Education, there’s a good chance that you’ve graded (or will grade) your fair share of papers that have been written and submitted to you via Google Docs. In all of your grading, chances are you’ve come across a sentence, paragraph, or an entire paper that sounds…unoriginal. When you suspect a student has plagiarized somebody else’s work, where do you turn for help? Until now, some of your only options were to copy and paste the suspected text into your favorite search engine or perhaps an online plagiarism checker like the one offered by PrePost SEO. Well, with a free add-on for Google Docs, you can check for plagiarism with just a few clicks, right inside the Doc!

Using the add-on

Checking your students’ work for suspected plagiarism has never been easier. Once installed, the add-on will be accessible inside all of your Google Docs. Follow the steps below to try it out:

1. Install the Plagiarism Scanner add-on from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Open up any suspected Google Doc and click Add-ons –> Plagiarism Scanner –> Scan Doc for Plagiarism.
3. Follow the instructions in the Sidebar to create an account with PrePost SEO and enter your API key into the field at the bottom. Note: You’ll only be asked for the API key the first time you run the add-on.
4. Select whether you want to scan the entire document or just the text you’ve highlighted and click Scan.
   

Within a few seconds you’ll see a report showing what percentage of the selected text was found in other documents on the web and will be given links to the sites where the text was found. It’s that easy!

If you find this add-on useful, please consider passing it on to a colleague or twelve. If you’ve got ideas for other useful add-ons that don’t yet exist, don’t be shy. I’d love to hear your ideas and do all I can to help them come to fruition.