Help students ensure their papers are accurately cited

Academic writing is a crucial skill for students, but many face challenges such as following citation style guides, which can lead to unintentional plagiarism. Additionally, modern issues like gender-biased language in German can create hurdles in maintaining gender-neutral writing, further complicating academic writing.

In collaboration with developer Daniel van Hoesel, we have built several tools for Techademia to assist students in overcoming these challenges. These tools help students detect problems in their documents and provide in-depth feedback on how to resolve them, ultimately helping them better understand the nuances of academic writing.

Probably the biggest challenge for most students is how to correctly cite their sources. Across the world, there are many different citation styles being used, each with its own set of guidelines that can be complex and subject to change over the years.

To assist students in better understanding the guidelines of their citation styles, we created a tool that allows them to upload their papers. Our tool scans the document for in-text citations and sources in their reference list, identifying any issues that do not conform to the guidelines. It can detect issues that may be difficult to spot with the naked eye and has been shown to outperform manual checks conducted by experienced proofreaders.