Turnitin: Plagiarism Checking Tool

Turnitin is an electronic text matching system that can be used to find text matches between students’ submitted work and existing electronic sources, including extensive databases of electronic articles, other student assignments, and the internet. Since Turnitin is a web-based system, student papers (essays or assignments) need to be made available in electronic format. Equally, Turnitin cannot find any matching text with sources that are not available electronically – even then, the system cannot search databases that are password protected. The resulting Originality Report (which reports the percentage of words in the student paper that match existing electronic sources) requires careful consideration and interpretation.

What is Turnitin?

Turnitin is an online plagiarism detection and academic integrity platform widely used by educational institutions, including schools, colleges, and universities. Its primary purpose is to help educators and instructors identify and prevent plagiarism in student submissions, such as essays, research papers, and other written assignments.

What is Similarity Report?

The Similarity Report (formerly known as Originality Report) highlights similarities in your assignment to other sources and provides links to these sources that contain similar text. Similarity Reports highlight text within your paper that are match other sources, but this is not necessarily reported as plagiarism. Your instructor is the one that determines your assignment is plagiarized.

Advantage of uses Turnitin

Consider the following benefits that Turnitin provides for students.

• 1. Instant Feedback

 You took hours or months to piece your essay together, check it for errors, correct it, and make it look good. Then, you submit it to another plagiarism checker and it takes hours to give you feedback. During this time, you feel stressed out and anxious that there must be something wrong with your essay. You certainly don’t need this kind of stress when you are working hard towards attaining a good grade and passing your exams. When you use Turnitin, you will avoid all this inner turmoil and havoc. The software has been designed in such a way that it will give you instant feedback. This way, you will know when you are on the right track. Additionally, in case the tool discovers any errors, you will have enough time to correct them as required before you hand in your essay to the lecturer.

• 2. Fairness

Another benefit that you stand to gain by using Turnitin is that it is always fair. Seeing as how it is a software program, it follows that there will be no favoritism, or prior objectivity. The lecturer will set a specific assessment for the essay writing assignment they give you. This will be used to check your paper to find out if there are any instances of plagiarism. Since everyone in the class will be graded using the same criteria and system, it follows that you can relax knowing that nothing will hinder you from getting the grade you have worked so hard for in that essay.

• 3. Acquire Honesty

Bad habits, like plagiarizing content, are hard to break. Once you ingrain this habit into your normal student life, chances are that you will repeat it anytime you are given a writing assignment in class. By using Turnitin, you can kick these bad habits from the onset. In fact, the software program has been designed in such a way that even the slightest instant of obvious plagiarism will be spotted and marked red. Fearing that you will get a poor grade should this happen to your essay, you will quickly learn the value of hard work, thorough research, proper writing, and honesty. Similarly, you will always force yourself to double and triple check your essays before submitting them. All of the above are positive habits that will serve you well once you graduate and get into the job market. Remember, no one likes a liar/cheat/thief. The earlier you learn this; the easier life will get for you.

Can Turnitin be used by students?

Unfortunately, as a student, Turnitin access is restricted. Turnitin only makes its plagiarism prevention software available to the faculty members of the university. For students, a good alternative way to check plagiarism is to send the paper to library officials.

Turnitin Usage Instructions:

Turnitin instructors/users are requested to follow the instruction mentioned below (recommendations had been suggested by the subcommittee for ‘Turnitin use’ and the last three years usage pattern).

1. Faculty members of DEML, who are teaching ENG105 and BA and MA courses (200 level and above), as well as faculty members of other departments/institutes, may only upload their student’s final term/research papers/printed reports on Turnitin.
2. Multiple submission of the same paper/report is not acceptable; this will be allowed only once.
3. Class names should be created mentioning the course name and section. Previous semester classes must be removed; if not removed, the Library will have the authority to remove those.
4. Core Faculty members may use Turnitin prior to the final submission of their research works/ articles/project reports only once. Faculty members can use the ‘Grammarly Premium’ version for subsequent checking if needed.
5. As all statistics of Turnitin usage are available through Turnitin Admin Panel; the Library will send report/inform the faculty members and the Chair of the respective departments about their Turnitin use periodically.
6. If the Turnitin usage crosses the license limit, Turnitin instructors’ accounts would be blocked from the top submitter to low.
7. Library Turnitin Team will always monitor the submission/usage/misusage and regularly send reports to the higher authority to maintain the subscribed license and fees.

We seek the kind cooperation of all Turnitin users/instructors for a sustainable subscription to Turnitin at NSU.