However, Turnitin does not contain every word ever written, and so may miss some matches even where text has been copied from another source. There is also an ongoing project to include many older, out-of-print and back-catalogue books and articles. Turnitin has agreements with many major publishers to include books, journal articles and conference proceedings when they are published. The Turnitin database is very large and growing.The makers of Turnitin also work closely with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office to ensure that your work is used fairly and legally. You retain the copyright and intellectual property of all work that you submit. When you submit work to Turnitin, it is usually stored within the Turnitin database so that it can be cross- checked against future submissions from other UK universities.No student would be accused of plagiarism without a member of staff first reviewing this report in detail to verify that there are indeed grounds for such an accusation based on reasonable academic judgement. The most important thing to understand about Turnitin is that it does not directly identify plagiarism instead it provides a report that allows students and staff to see where plagiarism may have occurred.These can be websites, books, journals and articles, or work that has previously been submitted through Turnitin. An originality report, which shows each of these matches in more detail, including the source(s) that Turnitin has found.A similarity index, which indicates the percentage of the submitted paper that Turnitin has identified as being matched against other sources.Staff can also view the work that has been submitted and there is also an option to mark the work online and include grades and comments which can be returned to the student once all papers have been marked.įor each piece of submitted work, Turnitin provides two things: Turnitin will then analyse the submitted work to identify text matches with other sources, usually completing this task within a few minutes. To provide students with a tool to identify and correct possible occurrences of plagiarism in their own work and improve their academic writing.Ī Turnitin assignment is set up by a lecturer, either through a university’s online learning environment or directly on Turnitin’s own website ( Students then access this assignment online and upload their work before the due date.To provide reports which can help identify occurrences of plagiarism.
To act as a deterrent against plagiarism.Turnitin is a web-based plagiarism prevention system used by most universities in the UK.