You’re probably familiar with Turnitin, a widely used tool for detecting plagiarism. However, you might wonder: can it truly identify instances of plagiarism? The straightforward answer is NO—Turnitin doesn’t actually detect plagiarism.
To be specific, Turnitin has repeatedly emphasized that it doesn’t simply work to uncover plagiarism in the traditional sense. Instead, it identifies any similarities in submitted work with content from its own academic database. This is meant to guide educators in deciding what information is being appropriately or inappropriately used by students.
Read on to learn more about how Turnitin works, how to avoid detection, and more!
Can Turnitin Detect Plagiarism? How Does Turnitin Check for Similarities?
Contrary to popular belief, Turnitin doesn't actually detect plagiarism. What Turnitin does is identify text similarities between submitted work and its vast database of academic journals, papers, articles, publications, essays, and more. This distinction is crucial. The tool doesn't make judgments about plagiarism; instead, it provides educators with information to guide their assessment of students' work.
Turnitin is also linked to the databases of several large educational institutions, which gives it a large repository of information to use and sift through for potential similarities.
Furthermore, any academic content that passes through Turnitin is entered into its database and can’t be erased. Simply put, it keeps a record of all submitted work. For example, if a student submits an assignment and scans it through Turnitin, the tool can detect any matching strings of text that may be in content previously submitted by other students.
In short, Turnitin never forgets what it sees. In this regard, the tool generates a ‘Similarity Report’ for every piece of work submitted for scanning. This report provides a percentage score with a list of all the sources it matched to your content. But do keep in mind that some educators may permit a range of acceptable similarity scores.
How Does Turnitin’s Similarity Report Work?
Once an essay, paper, report, or any other academic assignment is submitted to Turnitin, it works to analyze the content by breaking the text into line-by-line segments. From there, it starts comparing those individual phrases or sentences against potential matches in its database. The report will also indicate the original sources of any highlighted texts.
Whether the similarities are from journals, articles, reports, webpages, or even previously submitted work by other students, the detailed report will reference them accordingly. In this regard, the report will highlight the matching texts in different color ranges each of which indicates a percentage range between 0% to 100%.
The first is Blue, which indicates no matching text. The second is Green, which highlights a 24% or lower match. The third is Yellow, which covers 25-49%. The fourth is Orange for a 50-74% match. The fifth is Red, which marks a 75-100% match. However, remember that a high percentage match doesn’t necessarily mean plagiarism.
For instance, there are times when the content may include a famous quote or reference that can’t be phrased uniquely. In such instances, it’s up to the educator to evaluate Turnitin’s report and review which sections are being appropriately cited and which ones aren’t. In other words, it’s not abnormal for submissions to present some similarity scores.
How to Use Turnitin For Detecting Similarities?
The first thing to remember is that Turnitin doesn’t support individual user subscriptions. To get started, you will usually need to create a student account via your respective academic institution. From there, you can simply upload the essay, report, or paper for scanning with the plagiarism checker supporting Word, PDF, and TXT files.
Turnitin will usually take a few minutes to scan the content and highlight any similarities that it finds in its database. Once the report is ready, you can review it to see which areas in your work may need revision. You can simply click on the highlighted areas to see which sources your content has been matched to and make the relevant changes.
The platform also comes with the Feedback Studio feature that caters to educators, reviewers, and instructors. You can use it to add comments or even highlight certain sections in the content. The tool also comes with various grading features that you can use to grade the document.
Pros and Cons of Turnitin’s Similarity Tool?
Much like any other tool, Turnitin comes with its own benefits and drawbacks. Whether you are an educator or a student, there are certain aspects to consider. So, let’s quickly break down some of the platform’s main highs and lows in detail.
Pros
- High Accuracy Rate: Turnitin’s extensive academic database ensures any similarity reports it produces offer a high degree of accuracy. You can even identify the specific sources of any highlighted text in every document for easier review and editing.
- Simplistic User Interface: Turnitin is designed with a seamless and intuitive interface that makes it easy to upload documents and get detailed feedback even as a first-time user. Plus, it is quick to scan and generate reports, so you don’t need to wait long either.
- Extensive LMS Integration: Turnitin can be used in conjunction with a wide range of popular learning management systems. This means you can integrate this plagiarism checker into your daily academic workflow without any difficulty.
Cons
- Potential False Positives: While Turnitin boasts high accuracy, it is not immune from producing false positive scores. In certain cases, the tool may flag certain lines of text to be similar to certain sources even if they are in fact original.
- Limited Multilingual Support: Turnitin primarily works with English language content, which means it may not be very useful in scanning documents written in certain native languages. This can be problematic for students and educators in foreign countries.
- No Individual Subscriptions: Turnitin can only be accessed if you are enrolled or work at an academic institution. This means there are no individual user subscriptions available for anyone to opt-in, which restricts the general public.
How Can You Bypass Turnitin’s Similarity Scans With HIX Writer?
In any academic setting, the possibility of your submitted work being marked for plagiarism can be terrifying, to say the least. Depending on the institution, it could potentially lead to facing all sorts of penalties such as failed grades, demotion, or even suspension. Luckily, there is a simple way to ensure your work remains unique: HIX Writer’s Plagiarism Remover.
This is an AI-powered tool that employs live text fetching and online database searching to analyze your content for any similarities in wording, expression, and sentence structure. It then rewrites the entire text to eliminate any problematic sections that may be flagged on Turnitin. This provides you with an authentic and contextually accurate version that can pass any plagiarism scan without fail.
Conclusion
In this detailed guide, we’ve established how Turnitin can be used to spot similarities in submitted text using its vast archive of academic papers, reports, journals, documents, etc. Since plagiarism can jeopardize your academic performance and reputation, it’s natural to want to avoid Turnitin’s similarity detection. With HIX Writer’s Plagiarism Remover, you can put that fear to rest, and given the tool has a free trial, you can easily test it out now at no charge!