Reading and Understanding Turnitin Originality Reports.

What is a Turnitin report?

Turnitin is an originality checking and plagiarism prevention service that checks your writing for citation mistakes or inappropriate copying. When you submit your paper, Turnitin compares it to text in its massive database of student work, websites, books, articles, etc

What is the purpose of a Turnitin report?

Turnitin is a plagiarism prevention service that allows faculty at Webster University to the ability to check student papers and written assignments for originality against Internet sources, other student submissions, academic databases and more at the same time students are electronically submitting them

What is the acceptable percentage for Turnitin?

As a guide, a returned percentage of below 15% would probably indicate that plagiarism has not occurred. However, if 15% of matching text is one continuous block this could still be considered plagiarism. A high percentage would probably be anything over 25% (Yellow, orange or red).

Myth: Once a paper has been submitted to Turnitin, it is in the database forever.

Reality: Turnitin offers students the ability to “opt-out” of the database and provides institutions with the option of having an institutional database of student papers. Student papers may be removed only by the request of the class instructor.

Can Turnitin detect paraphrasing?

Turnitin over time has expanded its functionality to detect paraphrasing…. However, Turnitin has gained a wide array of processes to detect plagiarized and paraphrased content which makes the instructors of schools and colleges happily examine their student’s essays knowing that they are actually written by them.