Look at the highest matches – listed 1, 2, 3, etc.
#TURNITIN. FREE#
This is a good sign: but does not necessarily mean your work is free of plagiarism. Low similarity index – coloured yellow or green You are unlikely to get you a good mark if your work is a collection of quotations without much of your own input. But a high score does at least suggest that you have used a lot of quotations this will make your work seem very derivative. High similarity index – coloured amber or redįor reasons given above – regarding an average reading – a high score does not necessarily mean you are guilty of plagiarism: provided you have put all quotations in quote marks, or presented them as indented quotations, and correctly attributed them. By counting innocent material in this way, you can build up a significant “similarity index” without being guilty of plagiarism. Remember, Turnitin counts anything in your work which matches another source as unoriginal: so, e.g., if you have used a quotation – in quote marks and correctly attributed – this will be counted as unoriginal material.
This does not mean you are guilty of plagiarism. It is quite normal for an essay to have up to 50% of matches to other items or even more. Check your overall similarity index – the percentage at top right of the report:Īverage similarity index – up to about 50% of matches This guide to interpreting the reports has been adapted from the School of Law (2012), LLB Programme Handbook 2012-13, University of Reading.ġ. Tip: Making small alterations to your work to simply reduce the similarity percentage rarely results in good writing and can make it significantly less coherent. The video tutorial below is designed to help you do this. If you have this opportunity, make sure you use the report to help you correct and develop your referencing by understanding what the percentages and mark-ups mean. So a piece of work submitted to Turnitin may have a high percentage of writing that is not original, but this may include a lot of common phrases or acknowledged quotes.Īt present, some but not all students at Reading have access to Turnitin before they make their final submission to help them to check their work and correct any errors. It checks the originality of the submitted text against these texts and produces a report that shows the percentage of writing that is original, and the source of non-original text.Īlthough Turnitin has been described as a plagiarism detector, it is actually an originality checker. The database includes published books, journal articles, webpages and other submitted assignments.
#TURNITIN. SOFTWARE#
Turnitin is a software program that compares a submitted text to other texts in its database. Using Turnitin to develop your referencing