Integrity & trust
Citation integrity checker
EssayGenius treats plagiarism checking as a writing-quality and attribution problem, not a scary binary verdict. The Citation Integrity checker runs four detection layers and shows results progressively, so you can start fixing issues before the check even finishes. It is a heuristic audit, not a guarantee that every issue has been found.
How the four layers work
Layer 1: Source comparison
Compares your essay against attached sources that have imported text or substantial notes. This catches too-close paraphrasing from the source material EssayGenius can actually inspect. It is the most common attribution gap in academic writing.
Layer 2: Internal fingerprinting
Uses a document-fingerprinting algorithm to detect overlap between your essays. Flags accidental self-plagiarism or recycled paragraphs.
Layer 3: Academic database search
Searches 240 million+ scholarly works via OpenAlex for phrase-level matches against published abstracts and metadata. Catches unattributed borrowing from academic literature.
Layer 4: Targeted web search
An AI pre-screen identifies the most suspicious passages, then only those are web-searched. This keeps costs extremely low while still catching web-sourced overlap.
What the inline hints mean
- Red dashed underline: a close match with no citation nearby. Add a citation or rewrite in your own words.
- Amber dotted underline: a match that already has a citation but may need quotation marks, or a passage that is paraphrased too closely.
- Blue faint underline: matches a source in your library. Usually informational. Just double-check the attribution.
Citation health score
The status bar shows a citation health percentage after each check. A score of 90%+ means this pass found relatively few issues, not that the essay is automatically ready. Lower scores indicate passages that need attention. Click the shield icon to jump to the full report and pre-submit checklist.
How to interpret the results
A flagged passage is a prompt to inspect context, not proof that you cheated. Sometimes the fix is adding a citation. Sometimes it is switching to quotation marks. Sometimes the passage needs a cleaner paraphrase so your wording is genuinely yours. Use the pre-submit checklist to verify each category before submitting.
Paraphrase suggestions
When a passage is too close to source wording, EssayGenius can generate alternative phrasings in academic, conversational, or simplified styles. Treat those as revision starting points, not final answers. You are still responsible for making sure the rewritten sentence is accurate and correctly attributed.
The strongest workflow is still: read the source, write from understanding, then use the integrity checker as a final audit. The tool is a safety net, not a substitute for good research practice.