Plagiarism detection (Turnitin)

Deakin University uses Turnitin as the program that allows you and/or your teacher to check whether there is any unoriginal material in your work by comparing it to a database of print and online materials. Any matching text is detailed in an originality report.

The time taken for the originality report to appear can be a few minutes or greater than 24 hours for the first submission. For subsequent submissions, the report will not appear for at least 24 hours.

Submitting work to a Dropbox folder

A Dropbox with Plagiarism Detection enabled can be accessed within the Content or you can click on the Dropbox link on the Site Navbar. When you click the Dropbox link on the Site Navbar you can access a list of Dropbox Folders. Dropboxes with Plagiarism Detection enabled are indicated by an icon.

1. Click the name of the Dropbox folder that you want to submit an assignment to.
2. Carefully read the instructions relating to the assignment criteria and submission.
3. Click Add a File.
4. Click Browse to find the file you want to upload. Click Open. You can click Add to attach additional files.
5. Click Upload.
6. Add a comment if required.
7. Click Submit. Note: You cannot submit an assignment without an attachment.
8. You will receive confirmation that your file submission was successful.

Viewing your submissions

1. Click the Dropbox link on the Site Navbar.
2. On the Dropbox Folders page, go to the required assignment and click the number in the Submission column.
3. A list of submitted files displays on the Submission History page. You can check details of your submitted files, when the submission took place and the originality report.

Open an originality report

When an originality report is available to view, the status changes from In progress to a percentage rating under the Report column of your Dropbox. The colour of the report icon indicates the overall similarity index of the paper, based on how much matching text was found.

To view the originality report, click on the colored section next to the percentage rating. Your Paper will open in a new window.

Read an originality report

Originality reports are tools to help locate potential sources of unoriginal work in submitted papers. The reports in no way reflect assessment of whether a paper has or has not been plagiarised. Such a decision can only be made after careful examination of both the submitted paper and the suspect sources.

• The originality report has two main sections:
  • Paper text: The left side of the report shows the text of the submitted paper. Matching text is highlighted and numbered to correspond with sources to the right.
  • Matching sources: The right side of the report lists the sources of matching text.
• Click on the Paper Info button located at the bottom left hand corner to view information such as Paper ID, the date the report was processed, word count, number of submissions and matching similarity by source.
• Click on the View/edit filters and setting button in the bottom right hand corner to exclude quotes, bibliography, and small matches, and turn off multi-colour highlighting for the originality report. Don’t forget to click on Apply Changes.