Academic Use of Unfair Means

I've written my dissertation on assessing the feasebility of having solar panels on a drone, and my Univesity has told me I have 33% similarity according to Turnitin and requested a meeting.
My question is, I know for fact that I did not steal anyone else's work, however ths first ~40% of my paper is a literature review and analysis of existing work and how that could affect my calculations, as my task was Assessing Feasibility. In this section i have used a lot of descriptive language, to showcase and describe the available options for my work, and since it needs to be concise, often i did not find much better ways of explaining certain statistics or behaviour and just kept the half sentences-sentences since it counts as field specific common knowledge. I always cited if I took exact data or description/definitions, however the wording still flagged up as similar. When referencing someone else's exact work I always made sure that I pointed out that 'X and Y found or Postulated' etc (along with referecing it), however often that flagged up as plagiarism too. My question is, in the meeting, how should i present my point that I understand that the similarity is high for the literature review part, however since its a descriptive, purely analysis part of the paper, i thought it was justified (also to improve readability) not putting everything in quotation part, especially field-specific general knowledge, which often involve specific keywords and phrases?
As far as my actual physical work goes, the second half of the paper during which i present what my decisions are, what I built and the analysis of it, there's maybe a line in 20 pages that flagged up, as obvously that part is something I produced.
In short, if I did not steal anyone's work, but analyised lots of websites and papers, which led to high similarity due to having to keep them concise/understandable, am I in danger of getting denied a degree?
Thanks

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 1

alifelonglearner

Turnitin is designed to flag up possible plagiarism, which should then be followed by a manual review. If you have not plagiarised then you have nothing to worry about - the worst case scenario is they ask you edit some portions and/or reference more fully.

Relax and good luck!

Reply 2

Alan9876

Original post by alifelonglearner

Thanks, I'm more so worried about their definition of plagiarism, I feel like me showing that I didnt't steal anyone's work is not going to be enough for them.

Reply 3

Mr Wednesday

Original post by Alan9876

..... often i did not find much better ways of explaining certain statistics or behaviour and just kept the half sentences-sentences since it counts as field specific common knowledge.

OK, that's your problem. Unless that direct copy text is placed in italics / quote marks to show it's taken from elsewhere in addition to the reference, this counts as plagiarism. It is EXTREMELY dangerous to just try editing material a bit to make it “your own”, once Turnitin starts flagging up entire sentences or half sentences it's an issue for the marker. You really need to extract the meaning as short bullet points and then re-write from scratch in your own words. Sadly “I could find a way to express it more elegantly” won’t cut it in an investigation.

Reply 4

alifelonglearner

Please remember that it’s okay to get it wrong, and whilst universities are quite right to be thorough with any potential plagiarism, they are looking to prevent genuine cheating rather than a failure to correctly attribute phrases and use quotation marks, etc.

I would seek some help from whoever runs your courses/modules on how to correctly do these things.

Reply 5

Mr Wednesday

Original post by alifelonglearner

I would seek some help from whoever runs your courses/modules on how to correctly do these things.

The OP is writing a dissertation so is likely a final year or MSc student. That means they will have been exposed to guidance on how to reference and what counts as plagiarism multiple times already.

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