The ongoing battle of plagiarism rages on at all levels of education. For as many plagiarism checkers that are out there and for the vast number of sources they are capable of checking, there are still continuously new tools and methods being developed to circumvent the checkers. Enter Snipbot.
What is Snipbot?
Snipbot markets itself as an “Article Spinning, Text Rewriting, Content Creation” tool. Basically, Spinbot allows you to copy a body of text and paste it into a text box. After selecting a couple basic options and confirming you are not a robot, via reCAPTCHA, you receive an output of a paraphrased version of the original text entered.
Why is this significant?
Students are using Snipbot to take plagiarised content, automatically “paraphrase” the content for them, and then submit the work as their own. Because the plagiarized content is run through Snipbot the content will not be identified by plagiarism checkers such as SafeAssign and other similar tools and software. Snipbot and the plagiarism evasion trend was covered by Retraction Watch earlier this year. As educators, it is important to stay up to date on updated tools and trends such as this in an effort to combat plagiarism in all forms. While plagiarism checkers are powerful tools, they are just that, a tool. Like many of the tools in our arsenal as educators plagiarism checkers are great to use, but not to be the sole platform for which we review and combat plagiarism.
How it works?
After trying the tool, I couldn’t help but smirk because the output from Snipbot is rather noticeable. When testing the tool I used some language directly from the Snipbot page:
Original Text
“Spinbot is a free, automatic article spinner that will rewrite human readable text into additional, readable text. If you want to remove the ads and captcha requirement, you can also purchase a monthly or yearly subscription that will give you unlimited usage”
Snipbot Output
“Spinbot is a free, programmed text rewriter that will change comprehensible content into extra, clear content. In the event that you need to evacuate the promotions and captcha necessity, you can likewise buy a month to month or yearly membership that will give you boundless use”
In reading the output of this small passage, it wouldn’t take long before the reader grew suspicious, or doubtful, or unsure, or dubious, or wary, or skeptical, or…I think you get the point. Snipbot appears to run a thesaurus over the existing text and swap out words it identifies as key words and replaces them with a synonym. Unfortunately (well, fortunately for educators), even in this small sample you find questionable word uses that could call attention to the writing. Even though this passage may not be picked up by a plagiarism checker, any grader with even a moderately keen eye would probably be left scratching their head.
In reading even this short passage, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a scene from the show Friends where Joey over uses the thesaurus when writing a letter of recommendation in an effort to sound smart, brainy, or clever.
