This guide is designed to aid students in creating works that will result in successful Turnitin results. In addition, faculty will find a number of helpful tips for managing Turnitin filters and options.
This guide was created by Kimberly Browning (BA, MEd) as part of her MLS practicum through Texas Woman's University.
What is Turnitin?
Turnitin is an online software program that can detect similarities between an existing work and your submitted work. When you submit a work to Turnitin, the proprietary software compares that work to Turnitin's database.
Similarities are instances when your words match words found in other works found in the Turnitin database
Turnitin's database contains billions of works, such as:
Web Pages (blogs, organizational websites, Wikipedia, etc.)
Articles (scientific journals, book reviews, abstracts, etc.)
Other Student Papers (your own work, and the work of others).
After the Turnitin software has completed comparing your work to the contents of its database, aSimilarity Report is generated. This is also sometimes known as an Originality Report. They are the same thing.
** IMPORTANT**
Turnitin detects similarities, and not necessarily plagiarism.
Plagiarism is using someone else's words or ideas and passing them off as your own. For more information on plagiarism, click here.
When your work is run through Turnitin, any significant similarity to another work will be identified. This means, if you are using quotes and citations in your work (which you probably are), they will show up in your Similarity Report. This does not necessarily mean that you have committed plagiarism. Your instructor will determine whether the similarities in your work are actually due to plagiarism.
