Turnitin: The Similarity Report

When you submit an assignment to Turnitin submisson box in Moodle, it creates what is called a 'similarity report'. This report can potentially help you to avoid plagiarism. If you want to read more about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it, please find more information on the Brookes University library site:

https://www.brookes.ac.uk/library/library-services/information-skills/plagiarism/

How to make best use of it as a student

The following information depends on how your lecturer sets up the submission box. In many cases, submission boxes are set up to allow students to check the ‘Similarity Report’ for their assignment. If the submission box is set up in a way that allows this and you want to make use of it you can submit a draft. This should happen in good time before the deadline (= the due date).

Please note that it normally takes a minimum of 10 to 15 minutes (sometimes up to several hours, depending on the length of the assignment) before the similarity report becomes available.

In case you want to make changes to your submissions, you can do this on the original document, and then re-submit. The new submission will overwrite the old one (which has NOT been added to the database of submissions yet!) and create a brand new similarity report. Re-submissions will take 24 hours to be processed, which means you will have to wait 24 hours before re-submitting again. Please do make sure to submit drafts well in advance of your deadline if you want to make use of this facility. Please be aware that Turnitin's response time can be especially slow at busy times, i.e. towards the end of the semester, when many assignments are due.

Why would you want to see a ‘similarity report’ for your assignment?

Turnitin itself does not check your assignment for plagiarism, it checks your submission against a large database which includes billions of web pages and a collection of documents, including thousands of publications.

The similarity report shows your ‘matches’, and gives you a chance to find out potential problems with your assignment, for example, if you quoted correctly. So, it is not simply about a high or a low score, but more about providing an overview which sources you used and if you used them correctly.

How to interpret your similarity report

Lindsay Williams provides some guidance on how to do this. Please note that this video refers to a version of Turnitin/Grademark before it was changed to Feedback Studio. All the points in Lindsay's talk still apply, so please watch it:

Key points from the video

1. Turnitin is a large database of electronic resources such as journal articles, websites and other students' work.
2. It is a very useful developmental tool. It helps you find out if you have unintentionally plagiarised and how to reference correctly.
3. You will get a Similarity Index Score expressed as a percentage showing how much of your assignment matches the text store in the Turnitin database.
4. A high score does not necessarily mean that you have plagiarised.
5. A low similarity score does not necessarily mean that plagiarism has not occurred.
6. The primary source view on the left-hand side of the screen is a view of all the primary sources the student’s piece of work has been matched to.
7. Clicking on the name of a source will take you directly to the part of the assignment where the text matches a source in the database.
8. Turnitin stores assignments from Oxford Brookes and other institutions.
9. If people have uploaded an assignment with the same title and on the same topic, it is quite likely that similar words and phrases will appear in Turnitin. That is not a problem.
10. On the other hand, if Turnitin comes up with a long series of sentences matching another student’s work, it is more likely that plagiarism has taken place.
11. Just changing a few words from a sentence found elsewhere (paraphrasing) can count as plagiarism.
12. Your Similarity Index Score may be high due to referencing techniques such as using headers and footers. Don’t worry, this won't be seen as plagiarism.
13. If you are unsure about any points to do with referencing, please contact your tutor or your academic advisor. There are also a number of supporting guides to help you including the faculty referencing guide, RADAR, the library and the university website.

So, how do you access the ‘similarity report’?

When your lecturer has set up the Turnitin dropbox to allow students to access the similarity report, clicking on the ‘Similarity’ icon in the list of icons on the right will open the report:

When you see the report, click on the icon showing the similarity score:

This will open the ‘Match Overview’, which lists all the sources of matches.

If you want to download it click on the grey downwards pointing arrow in the list of icons. This will open a menu. Click on ‘current view’ to include the similarity matches.