Similarity scoring scenarios from Turnitin
A high similarity score does not always suggest that a piece of writing has been plagiarized, just as a low similarity score does not always indicate that no plagiarism has occurred. Consider the following scenarios:
- Submitting a document of considerable size could result in a 0% similarity score with a report that still contains matches. This is because the similarity score has been rounded to 0%, rather than being exactly 0%.
- You may have submitted multiple drafts of the same paper to your institution's private repository, meaning your final draft has resulted in a score of 100%. To avoid this issue, we advise that you only submit your final draft to the private repository.
- An individual within your institution has managed to acquire a copy of your document. They submit this document to the institution's private repository and receive a similarity score of 25%. You submit your original document a week later to the private repository but receive a 100% similarity score.
Reports can be accessed from either the Gradebook or Assignments
Gradebook:
Go to Grades
- Click the third dots next to the assignment name
- Click on SpeedGrader
Assignments:
- From course navigation select Assignments
- Select (click) the assignment name
When assignment opens, click on SpeedGrader (located on the right-hand side) to open
View in SpeedGrader:
- The student’s submission will open in SpeedGrader. On the right panel you will information regarding the submission
- Submitted date and submitted files
Click on the % shown to the left of the submission (this is the % reported) to open the Turnitin report
When the report opens you can review or select print out the report and/or download submission
Turnitin checks a user's work against its extensive database. If instances are found where a user's writing is similar to or matches against a source this will be flagged for your review in the match overview.
The database includes billions of web pages: both current and archived content from the Internet, a repository of works students have submitted to Turnitin in the past, and public scholarly publications, which comprises thousands of periodicals, journals, and publications.
Click on the source to view the side-by-side comparison.
Matching text from the student assignment submission on the left side of the screen and the internet match or the student paper match on the right side of the screen will be highlighted for comparison.
The sources are indicated by the numbers next to them. As well, it will show how many are from the same source to which you can click the left and right arrows to navigate to the next.
