General information on plagiarism for UNSW students

If you would like further information on academic integrity issues and UNSW plagiarism policy please have a look at the Plagiarism & Academic Integrity site from the UNSW Learning Centre.

Using Turnitin as a Student

You may be asked to submit your work to your teacher via the Turnitin service, either directly through the Turnitin web site at www.turnitin.com or through My eLearning Vista. Please note that if you are using Turnitin via My eLearning Vista you will not need to perform any account creation and setup steps. You will just login to Vista and submit your assignment to Turnitin via a Turnitin "submission box" inside your Vista course. If your lecturer is not using Vista he or she will provide you with instructions on how to submit assignments via the Turnitin web site.

Your lecturer may allow various settings in Turnitin. They may allow you to:

make multiple submissions during a specified time period, or only one
view the originality reports, or not have access to them
receive multiple originality reports every time you make a submission, or only one.

These settings may be determined by an individual academic, by a course convener, or by the School in which you are studying. Any questions about how Turnitin is being used should be directed to your teacher or course convener.

Your lecturer may also require you to submit the final version of your assignment into the Vista Assignment Tool after you have obtained a Turnitin originality report. If you are not sure what is expected of you, ask for clear instructions on where to submit your assignments and the associated deadlines.

Turnitin accepts electronic files in MS Word, WordPerfect, RTF, PDF, PostScript, HTML, and plain text format. No other file types are accepted. Only one file per student can exist for each assignment.

While an Originality Report is being generated the Originality Report icon will appear grayed out. Please note, an Originality Report for a student's initial submission to an assignment will generate within ten minutes of the submission, however Originality Reports for re-submissions to an assignment can take up to 24 hours to generate.

After you submit your assignment Turnitin will display a digital receipt on the screen. If you can't see a receipt it means that you have not successfully submitted your assignment. If you submit through Vista the receipt will also be sent to your Vista course Mailbox. If the Mail tool is enabled inside your Vista course you will be able to access your receipt and download it. The Mail tool is always available in the My eLearning portal. Otherwise click on your assignment title inside the Turnitin submission box to view your receipt number.

What you Need to Know about Papers Submitted to Turnitin

Student papers are submitted to the Turnitin database and will remain in the database for an unknown/undisclosed period of time.
Papers may be used by others to determine academic misconduct of other individuals. This may occur as long as the papers remain in the Turnitin database. Therefore, personal details (such as your name and/or contact details which can be used to identify you) should be removed from your papers to protect your privacy. Only use your student ID to identify yourself in your papers.
Turnitin stores your document both in its original form and in an 'electronic fingerprint' form. The electronic fingerprint of the document is used to compare against other documents submitted to Turnitin. The original form of the document is only available to you as the original author and to the lecturer of the course to which you submit the document. Neither UNSW nor Turnitin administration staff are able to view your submitted assignments.
If another document is subsequently submitted to Turnitin and matches text in one of your assignments, the lecturer responsible for the new document will only be provided with the following information:
• the name of the institution from which the matching assignment originated
• the course name that the matching assignment was submitted to
• the name and email address of the lecturer responsible for that course
• the file name of the matching assignment
• the date the matching assignment was submitted
This lecturer may email your own lecturer, and request their permission to view a copy of your assignment. UNSW lecturers are advised not to disclose authorship details to any person who makes this request.

Help Guides

Download the student guide in PDF format: Turnitin Student Guide

View a Short Student training Video, or download it with the following link: Student Training Video (play in your browser; select 'allow blocked content' if using IE)

The following link is an image explaining the Originality Reports that are generated from submissions to Turnitin: Sample Originality Report (opens in new window - enlarge fully to display correctly).

Troubleshooting and problems

If you experience any technical problems please refer to the Troubleshooting section of this site or alternatively contact the Service Desk on 9385 1333 or via email.