Students find the Originality Report useful for editing papers that include too many quotes and paraphrases. Faculty find the Originality Report useful as a tool to teach students to use proper citation and highlight the need for more student originality. Faculty can also use Turnitin as a tool to detect possible instances of plagiarism.
NOTE: It's important to remember the similarity score does not necessarily mean the paper was plagiarized. The similarity score is a percentage calculated based on the word count of the entire paper. This number indicates how much of the entire paper is similar to other sources. Sources may overlap, which will be indicated within the highlighted sections on the paper.
Turnitin may generate the Originality Report in as little as a few seconds or it may take up to several hours at peak times. If the colored icon does no appear in your inbox or is grayed out, try waiting a few minutes and then refreshing or reloading your browser window.
Classic View
After a student paper is submitted to the Turnitin service, Turnitin generates a Originality Report. The originality reports are represented in the instructor’s inbox by a color-coded icon. (Within your inbox, click on the colored square to view the actual report.) The color of the icon indicates the overall similarity index, percentage of text in the student paper that appears to match text from other sources.
The color of the report indicates:
- Blue – no matching text
- Green – 1-24% matching text
- Yellow – 25-49% matching text
- Orange – 50-74% matching text
- Red – 75-100% matching text
TIP: If you would like to switch back to Turnitin Classic View, you can do so by opening Feedback Studio and clicking the Return to Turnitin Classic link at the bottom of the page.
Feedback Studio
In Feedback Studio, the Similarity Layer will be along the right side of the screen and the icons are red. If all of the icons are not visible, click the red icon to open all of the options. To view the Originality Report Match Overview, click the Match Overview icon, which will be the first icon.
The Match Overview, which only reveal top matches, will appear in the right panel. To see more details about a score, click on the arrow to the right of the source.
This will have a drill down effect or a Match Breakdown. If the portion of the paper has more than one match, the number of matches will be given directly below the source name. Click on the source the reveal each individual match. Click on each individual match to navigate to its location in the document. You can also navigate between matches by using the left and right arrows.
To close the Match Breakdown, click the X in the upper right corner of the panel. The panel will close and can be reopened by selecting any one of the red similarity tools.
Interpret the Originality Report
For papers with multiple matches, the paper will be highlighted with each highlighted region color-coded and corresponding to a source. These regions of the paper have been numbered, as well. Click on a source to navigate to that source's location within the paper. A popup will appear that contains an except of the source from which the match was obtained.
For ease of reading, click on the Full Source View button to load the full source in the right hand panel. To close the full source view, click the X in the upper right corner of the panel.
All Sources
To drill down further into the report, click the All Sources button. All Sources will replace the Match Overview and display all of the source matches in the report. Click on a Source to navigate to text found in the paper that used the source.
To return to Match Overview, click the Match Overview button.
Categorical Exclusions
Source matches may be excluded, either in the settings of the assignment so that the exclusions are executed for all papers submitted for an assignment, or on the fly for individual papers. To exclude sources from the Originality Report, click the Filters and Settings button in the Originality Report group.
You can exclude sources that are quoted, exclude the entire bibliography or exclude sources based on size.
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Exclude Quotes/Bibliography:
To exclude all quotes and/or the bibliography, mark the appropriate checkbox(es). Click Apply Changes at the bottom of the panel.
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Exclude sources that are less than:
To exclude sources based on size, select the appropriate radial button, then enter the number of words/percentage in the corresponding field. Click Apply Changes at the bottom of the panel.
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After changes are applied, Feedback Studio will automatically navigate to Match Overview and show the results of the exclusion. To generate a new report, click Filters and Settings and then click New Report at the bottom of the panel.
NOTE: Exclusions are strictly less than the amount entered in the text field. For example, if 2 is entered in the % field, then all sources less that 2% (that is, equal to 1% since source matches are rounded to the nearest whole percent) will be excluded. Two percent matches will not be excluded in this case.
Consider the following when you are excluding sources based on size. The percentage or number of words that you choose to exclude should be determined while considering the overall size of the paper. For a ten-page paper, excluding a 10% match excludes one whole page and excluding a 5% match excludes half of a page, a relatively large exclusion. To decide on exclusion by number of words, look at the word count of the paper. A small exclusion, perhaps 7 words, can help produce a similarity score with a small buffer for students.
To cancel an exclusion, click the Filter and Settings button and either unmark an exclusion checkbox or select Don’t exclude by size. Then click Apply Changes at the bottom of the panel.
Individual Exclusions
To exclude individual sources, click the All Sources button. Click Exclude Sources at the bottom of the right hand panel.
Notice that the source bullets change to checkboxes. Mark the boxes next to the sources you wish to exclude. Click Exclude to apply your changes or cancel to keep the original report.
NOTE: Since sources may overlap, the exclusion of individual sources may or may not affect the Similarity index.
To view individually excluded sources, click the Excluded Sources button.
Excluded sources will be listed in the right hand panel. To restore excluded sources, mark the sources to restore and click Restore. To restore all individually excluded (not categorically excluded) sources to the Originality Report, click Restore All.
For more frequently asked questions about Turnitin, click here.