Instructors must review the settings for any assignment they are protecting with CopyLeaks to ensure the CopyLeaks scan is configured appropriately. This should be repeated each term as the settings cannot be copied in our normal copy procedures.

By adjusting the settings based on your particular courses and instructional needs, you can reduce the noise in your reports, that is, you can reduce false alarms and inflated match scores, making your reports more accurate and grading more efficient.

This article will go over how to access and modify CopyLeaks scan settings. The article also discusses the various scan settings and how they contribute to the accuracy of AI and plagiarism reports.

Article Contents

• How to Activate CopyLeaks and Modify Settings
  • Settings Panel
    • Scan Settings
      • Sources
      • Filters
      • Security Measures
      • Omit
    • Exclude Template

How to Activate CopyLeaks and Modify Settings

Open any assignment and click the Edit button in the upper right corner of the assignment page. Then scroll down to the Plagiarism Review area of the settings.

Be sure that Copyleaks Plagiarism Checker is selected in the dropdown menu.

To open the scan settings, click (A) Edit scan settings.

• This article focuses on settings only. Please keep reading for more information about CopyLeaks settings, below.

To view the CopyLeaks analytics for this assignment, click (B) View Analytics.

• For more on your assignment's analytics, read How should I use Analytics?

Settings Panel

There are multiple areas in the scan settings that you can modify to tailor your CopyLeaks results for each assignment.

Note: This article covers the most important features instructors should be familiar with. The General Settings are locked in the disabled mode in order to increase student privacy, and English is our default tool language. For now, we don't recommend modifying the Cross Language Settings. At present, we do not offer the Writing Assistant add-on.

1. Scan Settings: This panel provides switches to enable AI Content detection and Plagiarism detection, which are on by default (switches shown below are in the "on" position).  

a. Sources

b. Filters

c. Security Measures

d. Omit

2. Exclude Template: Instructors can upload a template assignment file so that the questions or prompts included in the assignment do not get marked as plagiarism.

Skip to Exclude Template details

Scan Settings

a. Sources Panel

Choose an option for CopyLeaks to compare student submissions against (See screenshot below).

• All the web: We recommend "all the web" for best plagiarism coverage.
• Include or Exclude sources: Add a specific URL or URLs to either of these options to limit plagiarism review coverage.
• Internal Database: This option will scan student submissions against submissions already in the CopyLeaks database. The benefit is that students cannot submit answers used by students in a previous term if that answer was previously submitted to a CopyLeaks-protected assignment. The drawback of using the internal database is that some noise is generated in the reports due to recycled, non-plagiarized content, such as your assignment's questions/prompts, references, titles, and other content that is not part of the graded portion of the assignment. To use the internal database but reduce the noise, use the Exclude template function.

b. Filters Panel

Choose an option for CopyLeaks to compare student submissions against (See screenshot below).

Similarity Level

• Identical: This option is the default. Identical texts will be marked in the report.
• Minor Changes: Text that has very minor changes from the source will be marked in the report.
• Paraphrased: Text that has been paraphrased from the source and remains similar overall will be marked in the report.

Results Calibration

• Focused Results: The default setting for focused results is balanced between lower and higher accuracy as recommended by CopyLeaks.
  • Lower Accuracy: Shows the most basic and relevant results.
  • Higher accuracy will result in more noise in the report in the form of duplicate findings, higher match percentage, and longer scan processing times; therefore, higher accuracy is not recommended.
• Max Results: Disabled by default, this setting is aimed at copyright infringement, and it is generally not applicable to the DES context, so we cannot recommend its use.

c. Security Measures Panel

• Safe Search: This setting can hide adult or violent content from appearing in the report results. In general, this setting is unnecessary in the DES context.
• Hide Sensitive Data: Although instructors do not ask students to submit personal data such as driver's licenses, credentials, passports, payment cards, etc., this option can prevent such data from appearing in the report. Overall, instructors will not find it necessary to activate this setting.
• Character Manipulation: It is possible to fool a plagiarism detector with manipulated inputs like hidden characters, white font, or other special characters. You should activate this setting to prevent advanced cheating efforts. Read more about character manipulation from CopyLeaks: What does a Character Manipulation alert mean?

d. Omit Panel

To reduce noise in your reports, you can choose to exclude certain common identifiers and unchanging elements from the scan.

• References, quotes, citations, titles, and tables of contents are unique identifiers that are not ever paraphrased or stated differently, and so they can inflate a similarity score, making it appear as if a student has plagiarized before you inspect the results thoroughly. Check these items to exclude them from reports so that they do not contribute to the similarity score.
• Code comments or HTML templates are also rarely a concern in the DES setting, but if these items are common in your course, you should also exclude them to reduce noise in your scan results.

Exclude Template

The Exclude Template feature of an assignment's settings allows you to upload a template document that contains the questions featured in that assignment. Doing so removes the included text from the scanned material to reduce noise in the similarity report. You can upload a Microsoft Word or another text file of your assignment to create the Exclude Template.

Example Exclude Template and Report

Below is a screenshot of an assignment template that was uploaded to the assignment as a .docx file.

In the report shown below, you will notice that all of the text in the template above appears italicized and in a light gray highlighting. Without uploading the template, the assignment's questions (if included in the student's submission) would appear red to indicate plagiarism. 

Note: The student's submitted text will be highlighted if similarity is detected. In the example below, much of the text is found to be similar to results in the CopyLeaks database. Also, there is an indication that the content is 100% AI generated, but you would need to click on the AI Content tab to further evaluate the submission.