Scientists at Drexel’s Privacy, Security and Automation Lab have recently announced the beta release of a new author identification tool, JStylo. At present, this software is capable of identifying a work’s author with 80-85 percent accuracy out of a pool of 40 writers.

Given time, I think that this tool (or some version of it) could see widespread use in the academic and publishing communities. Papers submitted to journals, stories sent to literary magazines, even projects for classes could be scanned for the likelihood of plagiarism.

Granted, such a situation is probably years away, and building up a database of authors’ works for comparison would be no easy task. But if this software can achieve a successful identification rate of close to 100 percent, I see the potential for a new era of academic honesty.

(For more information about JStylo, check out either of the links above.)