Turnitin

Turnitin is a plagarism checking tool. Most work which is submitted for an internal or external grade will be passed through turnitin by managebac

When work is submitted, turnitin produces a 'Turnitin similarity index'. This shows to what extent the work produced matches other sources in the turnitin database.

The database includes internet sources, books, journals and student work from both our school and other schools around the world.

High and Low Similarity index

A high similarity index does not indicate that there is anything to be concerned about however a low similarity score in the IB is an immediate concern. A low similarity score means that there are very few matches. Anybody who has done any academic research will have cited and referenced their sources. These appear in the similarity index. Also any quotations which have been appropriately used will appear. To investigate whether the similarity index is a problem or not we need to go to the Turnitin feedback studio. To access the studio there should be a link on the file submission location 'Feedback Studio'

Interpreting the report

This report shows a match of 22% which managebac flags in an alarming red colour but when we look at it there is little cause for concern. There are 56 different sources matched in the actual report but the highest match is 2% of the paper

This suggests that the matches are small pieces of text that either accidentaly coincide with other text or are short references (or something else). We do need to just check to make sure that there isn't a problem

When we check, there are some things which we need to look carefully for

Quotations or other directly copied work which we have forgotten to cite or it is not clear which part is the quotation
Paraphrasing of other people's work that we have forgotten to cite or poor paraphrasing of work (whether cited or not) which is so similar to the original text that it suggests that we haven't understood the original work
Large sections of text which have been copied and pasted (whether cited or not)

Any of these can be considered as acts of academic misconduct by the school and the IB and could result in serious consequences

Quotations or other directly copied work which we have forgotten to cite or it is not clear which part is the quotation

The above is a direct quote but there are no quotation marks or citation. This would be considered plagiarism but can be easily fixed with an intext citation and either quotation marks around the section in pink or paraphrasing the section in pink

2. Paraphrasing of other people's work that we have forgotten to cite or poor paraphrasing of work (whether cited or not) which is so similar to the original text that it suggests that we haven't understood the original work

The text to the left is very poorly paraphrased. The student has taken the original work and added / changed a few words. It is cannot be considered the work of the student and therefore would be considered as academic malpractice.

The work also has no citation attached to it and this would be another reason for considering that the author has committed academic malpractice.

The author must rewrite this much more into their own words and cite the work

3. Large sections of text which have been copied and pasted (whether cited or not)

An extended essay is supposed to be your own work which shows your ideas. The work can be supported by direct quotations but those quotations cannot be so long that they stop the essay being your own work. It is impossible to give an exact definition as to when quotations become not your own work but as a guideline. If you are quoting a whole paragraph this is proably too much.

What not to worry about

Turnitin reports can look quite alarming but the vast majority of matches in the vast majority of pieces of work that we see are good acdemic practice and nothing to worry about

You should not worry about,

Any short quotations which are approrpriately cited
Any sections of paraphrasing which are significantly different in structure from the original work and are appropriately cited
Matches to your citations and reference
Accidental short matches and accidental matches in lists

Accidental short matches and accidental matches in lists

There are only so many ways that we can write certain sections of text and so it is inevitable that turnitin will flag some of your text. This is particularly the case in common sections in IAs. For example in a science IA your research question will almost certainly include the independent variable and the dependent variable. A common way of structuring this would be 'How does increasing the [independent variable] affect the [dependent variable]' If you write this in your science IA it will almost certainly be flagged but it is not a problem as it is a clear accidental short match.

It is also common to cluster items in lists. This is common practice and is likely to lead to accidental matches as other authors will have done the same (see example below). This is nothing to worry about unless you have copied and pasted the list directly from a source or are paraphrasing a list from a sources

AI checking tool

Turnitin has developed an AI checking tool. As with the plagarism checking tool we need to be very careful when using this tool. Fundamentally, a student should not need to use the AI checking tool as they should not be using AI to write sections of the work and if AI is used it is cited as you would the work of somebody else. However, it is feasible that a student might be concerned that they have used a simple grammar checker such as grammarly and are concerned that the help that it has given is too much.

Using the AI checking Tool

In turnitin studio there is an option in blue which says AI and then gives a percentage (see picture on the right)

If there is an astericks (*) next to the percentage that means that there is only a small match and it is less likely to be accurate (it produces more false positives)

Even without an astericks, we need to be aware that AI checking software is in its infancy and it is likely that it will both have missed material which has been generated by AI and detected material which has been created by the student. We cannot use it to draw conclusions, we can only use it to ask questions.

When you click on the percentage it will take you to a separate report where the suspected AI generated rext is highlighted. Note, turnitin AI detection only currently works for content written in English. Other requirements are:

The file must be at least 100MB
File must be between 300 words and 15,000 words
File must be pdf, docx, txt or rtf format

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