What is Turnitin and what does it do?
Turnitin is an online assignment submission tool which your department might ask you to use when submitting your assignments.
Turnitin has features for submission, marking and feedback. It also generates a similarity report to help indicate if the work is original. You will be able to access this report, shortly after submission.
As a paper is scanned by Turnitin the system produces two pieces of information:
- A similarity index, which identifies how much of the submitted work Turnitin can identify as being matched against another source.
- A colour coded originality report, which identifies each match in more detail and allows more detailed investigation of the original source.
Turnitin does not in itself identify plagiarism, this remains an academic judgement. However, the index and report can provide valuable evidence in making this judgement as well as supporting you in developing your own knowledge about plagiarism, referencing and your academic writing skills.
We have a guide to submitting to Turnitin, and more advice on the Submitting assessments online page.
