Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research - Raising Student Awareness for Proper Citation

"We have been using PlagScan successfully at more than 300 higher education secondary schools (Gymnasium) since 2015 to examine academic work of students."

- Anna Lasselsberger

Why do we use a plagiarism software?

Our goal is to prepare students properly for the academic and scientific work on universities. In Austria, students matriculate from university after submitting a VWA (administration and economic academy exam) Aside from research and correct utilization of scientific literature, we also place importance on proper citation of sources.

In the digital age, students are more likely to use search engines and to copy passages from web sources. To look for those copied passages manually would be too time-consuming for faculty and take away time for the exams’ qualitative evaluation. This is why we have been using PlagScan successfully at more than 300 higher education secondary schools (Gymnasium) since 2015 to examine academic work of students. PlagScan helps to detect plagiarism, relieves our faculty and sharpens the awareness of our students to work properly on academic assignments.

How did PlagScan convince us?

PlagScan proved to be flexible and innovative. In cooperation with EduGroup, we were able to integrate PlagScan into the VWA database. Students use this platform to submit their work, which enables a direct plagiarism scan per click of the faculty member as soon as the work is submitted. This progressive way convinced us to keep using PlagScan, which also accommodates and modifies features continuously in order to serve us perfectly.

The second important factor that convinced us of PlagScan was its data security. PlagScan’s servers are based in Europe and therefore follow strict data security regulations. According to Austrian data security law DSG 2000 §10, all data has to be kept within the VWA database and can not be accessed by third parties.

What are the results?

Since our students know that all VWA are being examined for plagiarism, the students’ awareness of proper citation has grown significantly. Also faculty has incorporated PlagScan’s plagiarism reports into their workflow, while recognizing a new and improved correction process that is accurate and time-efficient.

What are the plans for future collaboration of PlagScan?

We will be using PlagScan for the third consecutive year in 2017. Thus far, we have been using it for all higher education secondary schools in the country. We would like to expand its utilization to all vocational schools in Austria.