Turnitin Similarity Report (Plagiarism Check)

Though known for scanning submissions for plagiarism, Turnitin actually does not check for plagiarism in your work. What it does is check your submissions against its database, and if there are instances where a writing is similar to, or matches against, one of its sources, it will flag this for you as instructor to review. Turnitin's database includes billions of web pages: both current and archived content from the internet, a repository of works other students have submitted to Turnitin in the past, and a collection of documents, which comprises thousands of periodicals, journals, and publications. 

Turnitin Similarity Report Introduction Video

The following links should be helpful in understanding and interpreting Turnitin's Similarity Report:

• Interpreting the Similarity Report: https://help.turnitin.com/feedback-studio/turnitin-website/student/the-similarity-report/interpreting-the-similarity-report.htm
  • Similarity Reports provide a summary of matching or highly similar text found in a submitted paper. When a Similarity Report is available for viewing, a similarity score percentage will be made available.
     
• Viewing a Breakdown of the Report’s Matches: https://help.turnitin.com/feedback-studio/turnitin-website/student/the-similarity-report/viewing-a-breakdown-of-your-matches.htm
  • To view the Match Overview, click on the red, numerical similarity score from the product toolbar. The Match Overview will be displayed within the Match Overview side panel.
     
• Viewing All Sources Associated with a Paper: https://help.turnitin.com/feedback-studio/turnitin-website/student/the-similarity-report/viewing-all-sources-associated-with-your-paper.htm
  • In the All Sources side panel, all of the sources that have been found are displayed and sorted by highest percentage to lowest percentage match. Clicking on any source will change the navigation bar at the top of the page, displaying how many times that this source has matched in the paper. 
     
• Viewing Source Details: https://help.turnitin.com/feedback-studio/turnitin-website/student/the-similarity-report/viewing-source-details.htm
  • If you would like to see more information regarding the text that has matched to a source, click on the source number from within the paper.

For more help with Turnitin, please visit TurnItIn Instructor Manual for Canvas