Turnitin Services

The Turnitin Similarity Detection and GradeMark services are available to the academic community of UNSW .

The Turnitin Similarity Detection service can be used as a tool to check the originality and citation practices in students' work after final submission, or be made accessible to students as well as staff and allow for checking before final submission of assignments, to help in preventing the submission of plagiarised material. The availability of the originality reports generated by the similarity detection tool to students is determined by the individual schools and academic staff of the University.

The GradeMark service plugins in to the Similarity Detection software and allows a teacher to mark assignments online in their original file formats, to set up rubrics with marking criteria and lists of standard comments. The GradeMark interface also allows the student and the teacher to view all comments for the whole assignment.

Turnitin also provides additional products that plugin to the Similarity Detection software, which are not currently included in the UNSW license. Excluded from our license are Peer Review and GradeBook.

How it works

Turnitin.com maintains a vast digital repository of submitted papers, internet pages (both past and present), subscription journals and periodicals. This massive database of digital material has been compiled by continually cataloging and indexing the entire Internet. Online paper mills, academic sites, news sites, proprietary databases and papers from participating institutions are also indexed and stored inside secure, in-house databases.

Students submit their assignments for comparison against those stored within the Turnitin databases. When a paper is submitted to Turnitin, it uses advanced pattern-matching technology to identify similarity between submitted papers and those that it can find in its own databases. The system returns customised Originality Reports that provide links to all instances of matching sources which are highlighted and coded. Hence it offers more than just an automatic 'googling' of papers or passages of papers, as the sample similarity report shows (opens in new window - enlarge fully to display correctly). Download a PDF illustrating the plagiarism prevention process.

Important Note

Turnitin does not decide if a student submission has been plagiarised, but the tool reports text matches that need to be analysed. The Turnitin report does not differentiate between correctly cited references and unacknowledged copying. It provides a ranking of submissions, according to the level of text matching with other sources in its database.

The results of Turnitin Originality Reports are designed to assist academics, other teaching staff, and students (if reports are made available to them), to identify possible plagiarism or instances of incorrect citation of work, and resolve the problem. Issues identified should be discussed between the student and the academic. The tool is most effective when used as an educational tool to raise student awareness about plagiarism issues.

All possible incidences of plagiarism, the investigation of, and consequences of, are subject to the bylaws, policies and procedures of the University. UNSW maintains a web site of resources on plagiarism issues with useful information for both staff and students to consult: http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/plagiarism