How to read a Turnitin assignment originality report

Quick guide for students

Note: You will only be able to view Turnitin originality reports if your instructor has set up your assignment so that you can access them.

To open a Turnitin originality report
To read a Turnitin originality report
To refine your search
To print and save reports
To refresh a report

To open a Turnitin originality report

Note: 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.

Note: Originality reports are tools to help locate potential sources of unoriginal work in submitted papers. The reports in no way reflect Turnitin's 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.

  1. To open a report, click the coloured icon in the report column. The report will open in a new window.

The originality report has three main sections:

Note: You can change the appearance and behaviour of reports by clicking preferences in the report header.

top

To read a Turnitin originality report

Direct Source Comparison lets you quickly compare matching text to its source.

  1. To activate Direct Source Comparison, click a block of matching text. The source of the matching text will open to the right.
  2. If the source you are viewing contains multiple segments of matching text, you can navigate between segments using the up/down arrows. The text in the paper will automatically line up with the source for easy comparison.
  3. To view matching text from a web source in its original web context, you can do so by clicking the show in web page link (if a matching web link has been found).
  4. When you have finished viewing a source, return to the list of matching sources by clicking the close link, or click on a new block of matching text to jump to another source.
  5. By default, the report shows only the highest percentage matches. It is possible that smaller matches are obscured by larger matches and are not shown. To see an exhaustive list of sources, click the mode drop-down list and select show matches one at a time. To view the matching text for a given source in this mode, click the radio button next to it.

    To show only matching text and source links without the source view, select quickview (classic) report.

Note: If a source is from Turnitin's database of student assignments, student papers will show up next to the source. As a student, you will not have access to these sources.

In addition to searching a copy of the active web, Turnitin also searches a copy of the archived web, which includes an extensive number of web pages no longer available on the Internet. If a match is found in the archive, internet (archive) will appear next to the source.

top

To refine your search

  1. Click on either or both of the exclude quoted or exclude bibliography links toward the top of the page to exclude material that is quoted (ie within double quotation marks) and/or from a source that is listed in the paper's references. When you exclude material, the Originality score on the report and in your inbox is updated to reflect the exclusion of this matching text. These functions are approximate and you can re-include excluded material by clicking the include quoted or include bibliography links.
  2. To exclude a source from the show highest matches or quickview mode of your report, click the cross icon to the right of the source. Excluded sources will still appear if you select the show matches one at a time mode. You can restore excluded sources by clicking the plus icon to the right of the source.

top

To print and save reports

  1. Click the print icon in the report header. The report that is printed will list the sources before the paper text.
  2. To download and save a copy of a report in HTML format, click the download icon in the report header. You can then choose where you want to save your report.
  3. Close the report window to return to the assignment inbox.

top

To refresh a report

Note: Since the Internet is constantly changing, you might want to generate a new report at a later date to see if there are any new matching source documents. You can generate new reports for past submissions at any time. When you refresh a report, the current report is deleted and a new report is generated. The time taken for the originality report to appear for second and subsequent submissions will be at least 24 hours.

  1. Open the originality report, then click the refresh icon in the report header.
  2. A pop-up window will remind you a new report will be generated and ask if you wish to continue. Click OK.
  3. You will return to the assignment inbox.
top