Student Guide to Turnitin - University of Edinburgh ...

Student Guide to Turnitin

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Contents

Overview of Turnitin ........................................................................................................................... 3
Submitting to Turnitin though Learn .................................................................................................. 3
Accessing your Originality Report....................................................................................................... 6
Interpreting your Originality Report ................................................................................................... 6
Excluding quotations, small matches and bibliography...................................................................... 7
Resubmitting to Turnitin..................................................................................................................... 8
Printing or saving your Originality Report .......................................................................................... 8
Paper Info............................................................................................................................................ 8
Further Information and Help............................................................................................................. 9

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Overview of Turnitin

Turnitin is a service that is provided for all students at the University of Edinburgh. Turnitin allows
students to submit a copy of their assignment to a Turnitin submission box, where it will produce a
Turnitin Originality Report (OR). The OR can help you with your academic writing to understand what
may be considered as plagiarism and to help ensure that you reference all source materials.

Turnitin manages a database containing over 24 billion webpages, 300 million student papers and
millions of journal and other published articles. When you submit your assignment to Turnitin, the
service matches text in your assignment to any of the sources it finds in its database to produce the
overall OR. Both the original source of the matched text and your own writing are visible side-by-
side, allowing you to easily see where the match has originated. The OR is presented in terms of the
percentage of the text in your submission that matches sources in the Turnitin database, and the
percentage is colour coded depending on the number of matches found.

It is important to be aware that the percentage value / colour coding in the Originality Report is not
necessarily an indication of plagiarism, but of the matched text in your assignment - you may have
correctly referenced or quoted materials that appear in the report. The key to using Turnitin to your
benefit is using the matches to identify:

1. Where you have not referenced source material and should have
2. Where you have paraphrased extensively leading to a high match (in this case you should

consider rewriting the passage)
3. Where you may need to include quotation marks

There  is  no  “ideal”  percentage  number  that  you  should  be  aiming  for.  Each  match  must  be  reviewed  
in turn to check referencing, quotations and paraphrasing.

In the Business School students are required as part of the assessment procedure to submit a final
version of their assignment through Turnitin prior to the assignment deadline. However, Business
School students may also submit drafts of their assignment prior to the assignment due date in order
to view the Originality Report and to use this to inform future drafts or the final submission. Each
submission to the Turnitin assignment submission box will overwrite the previous version, allowing
you to revise your draft, resubmit and retrieve a new Originality Report. Although the first
submission to a Turnitin submission may only take a few minutes to produce the OR, any
resubmission will take up to 24 hours before the OR is generated.

Originality reports may be referred to by University staff to assist in identifying plagiarism while
following due procedures.

Submitting to Turnitin though Learn

Each course in Learn will have a Turnitin submission box set up. It is very important that you only
submit the assignment for that course through that Turnitin link – if you submit it to more than one
course it will match against itself and produce a 100% report.

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In Learn, click on >>View / Complete next to the Turnitin icon for the assignment:

This will open the assignment inbox which will display the assignment start date (usually when the
submission box was set up) and the assignment due date. There is also a date called the post-date
which you can generally ignore as it is only relevant if Grademark is being used for online marking. If
your tutor is using Grademark you will be specifically advised of this.

To submit your assignment, click the blue Submit button. This will open the submission screen:

Leave the default option of Single file upload. Your name will automatically appear in the first and
last name fields. Enter the title for your submission and click the Browse button to locate your
assignment file. Click Upload to upload the file - you can then preview the file before submitting:

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If when reviewing the file you realise that it is the wrong file or you wish to upload another file
instead, click on the link Return to Upload. If you click the Return to Upload link you will receive a
pop-up message asking whether you wish to leave the page. Click Leave this page to remove your
current submission and return to the original submission page.

File upload requirements
 File must be less than 20MB
 The maximum number of pages in the assignment is 400
 File types allowed are: Word, WordPerfect, Postscript, PDF, HTML, Open Office(ODT),
Hangul(HWP) and plain text

If you are happy with the previewed file, click Submit to submit the file to Turnitin. You should
receive a message confirming that your submission is being processed. You will then receive an
onscreen digital receipt and a copy of this receipt will also be sent to your University of Edinburgh
email account.

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Accessing your Originality Report

From the digital receipt page above, click the Go to Portfolio link which will take you to the
assignment inbox. The first time you submit your assignment to a Turnitin link, the originality report
will usually be generated within a few minutes. If the icon under Similarity is greyed out it means
that the report is still being processed and you may have to go out of the Turnitin inbox and back in
again to refresh the page in order to see the report.

Once the report has been processed you will see a percentage figure and a coloured icon under the
Similarity heading. Click the percentage and this will open up the document viewer where you can
see the Originality Report. You can also click the View button to open the Turnitin report. If the
document viewer opens but the Turnitin report is not visible click on the Originality button, which
will turn red and display the report.

Interpreting your Originality Report

The document viewer contains the body of your assignment submission on the left and the matches
with the Turnitin database are listed in a column on the right-hand side under Match Overview. Any
matches are highlighted in your text and are number and colour-coded to the sources in the Match
Overview column.
You can review matches by clicking on the highlighted text which will open a pop-up window to
display the original source of the text. Click Full Source View to open a new webpage with the full
original source displayed.
It is possible to zoom in and out of the document by using the zoom controls at the bottom of the
document viewer:

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Each of the matches listed are displayed as a percentage of the text in your submission that is found
in a particular source or sources. It is important to be aware that the match itself is not necessarily
an indication of plagiarism, but is highlighting the text that matches the source(s). You may have
referenced a match but it will still add a certain percentage to the overall originality score. The
matches will highlight areas in your assignment where you may need to spend time reviewing your
referencing and how you may have paraphrased an original source. Poorly paraphrased passages will
lead to higher matches as they will tend to have included more of the actual words (often just
rearranged) from the source material rather than being written in your own words. If re-written in
your own words you must still include the reference to the source.
Match Breakdown
The Match Overview displays the most prominent potential source match, but the match may have
been found in multiple sources. To view all sources hover the mouse over the match in the Match
Overview column and click the arrowhead icon:
This will open the Match Breakdown for that source:

Excluding quotations, small matches and bibliography

At the bottom of the Match Overview panel is an icon shaped like a funnel . Click this icon to
give options to remove direct quotations, small matches and your bibliography from the originality
report score. Click Apply changes to save any changes you make.

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To return to the Match Overview, click the icon at the bottom of the Filters and Settings screen.
Note: Changes to the OR score due to filters that you apply is only reflected in your view of the
Originality Report. Your tutors will still see the OR score with no filters applied.

Resubmitting to Turnitin

If you have submitted your assignment prior to the due date you will have the opportunity to then
use the Originality Report to make changes to your assignment and resubmit to Turnitin. Each
resubmission will overwrite the previous submission and you will receive a new Originality Report.
All students must submit a final copy of their assignment to Turnitin.

Note: All resubmissions take 24 hours to generate a new Originality Report

Printing or saving your Originality Report

It is possible to save your Originality report as a PDF file, which can then be printed out. To
download the file click the print icon on the bottom-left of the document viewer .
This will give you options to download either the Turnitin Originality report or a copy of the Turnitin
digital receipt of submission:

Paper Info

The Paper Info screen displays the paper ID, submission date, word count and an overview of the
percentage of overall matches split between internet, publications and student paper sources. To
access the Paper Info screen click the information icon at the bottom-left of the document viewer:

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Further Information and Help

Turnitin Student User Manual
http://submit.ac.uk/en_gb/training-menu/student-training/student-user-manual
Turnitin – Viewing Originality Reports (includes video)
http://submit.ac.uk/en_gb/training-menu/student-training/viewing-originality-reports
Guide to Good Academic Practice
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/institute-academic-development/undergraduate/good-
practice/referencing
Information on Plagiarism
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/academic-
services/students/undergraduate/discipline/plagiarism