Scientific and qualifying works in jurisprudence are characterized by the active use of texts of normative and judicial acts, a large number of template phrases and legal terms. They significantly reduce the originality of the work, which causes confusion among teachers, supervisors, editors and reviewers and often leads to refusal of publication or non-admission to the defense.

Despite a number of improvements proposed by Anti—Plagiarism, such as the introduction of the "white collection" of SPS Garant: regulatory documentation and a module for processing template phrases, the authors of legal texts still face serious difficulties due to a decrease in the percentage of originality.

The main problem is that many organizations use the "percentage approach" and are not ready to conduct expert analysis of reports. This means that works are evaluated solely based on the percentage of originality, without regard to context, correctness of citations and specific features of the text.

In order to find a way out of this situation, we decided to bring together the authors of works on law and those who check such works at a round table. Our goal was to draw the attention of the professional community to the problems of checking works on jurisprudence in the Anti-Plagiarism system and, together with you, to identify possible solutions.

Audience survey: hypothesis confirmation

At the end of the round table, a survey of participants was conducted. We thank all our respondents and are ready to share the results. The purpose of the survey was to confirm the hypothesis about the inconvenience of working with the current "Citation" indicator, which is calculated on a par with the indicator of originality. The survey also helped determine how users see the markup of quotes and template phrases and which new features of the Anti-Plagiarism system would be of the greatest interest to them.

The survey results confirmed the need for further changes in the system and the development of new tools that will make the verification of legal texts more correct and convenient for all participants in the process.

57 people participated in the survey, 43 of them edit the report when working with the system.

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The graph shows that the survey participants agree that any text that is correctly formatted as a quotation is now a citation.

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At the same time, the system now assigns correctly formatted citations to the "Citation" indicator, even if it does not find their source. According to the survey results, it turned out that users are satisfied with the current behavior of the system.

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Then we asked the respondents a question about accounting for sources from the "SPS Garant: regulatory documentation" in one of the indicators. According to our hypothesis, it is inconvenient for users to work with sources from SPS Garant: regulatory documentation. Especially for experts who have to edit the report frequently. We also assumed that by taking into account fragments from these sources in the "Citation" indicator, the originality of the entire work decreases, which negatively affects the user experience.

The results show that the opinions of the participants were almost equally divided. There are those who are satisfied with the current logic of the system, in which matches with "ATP Garant: regulatory documentation" are marked as citations. But there are also those who believe that fragments of normative legal acts should be attributed to the original text.

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This graph shows that template phrases pose a big problem for users who are lawyers, law schools, and law organizations. A significant number of respondents believe that template phrases should not be included in the report.

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Currently, the Anti-Plagiarism system does not identify the sources of template phrases and quotations. Most of the users voted for the fact that the report needs information about which sources this text was found in.

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It is not enough for users if the quote is simply highlighted in the text of the report. It is important for them to know if it has been changed and supplemented by the author of the work. This will allow the expert who checks the report to determine the correctness of the quotation and, if necessary, give feedback to the author.

We plan to take these results into account in the further development of the functionality. In particular, we will expand the possibilities of working with citations and template phrases to make the verification more accurate and convenient, including for specialists in the field of law. We will also be working on the implementation of functionality that allows you to track changes and additions to quotes.

The Anti-plagiarism system.Kazakhstan continues to develop taking into account the wishes of users, and we are confident that this cooperation will help create more convenient and effective tools for everyone who works with texts.

Get test access to the Anti-Plagiarism system.Kazakhstan" can be found at the link: antiplagiat.com/corporate/access/test