Similarity report

Is 34% plagiarism too high on turn it in? I just handed in my assignment and got that, it also highlighted a lot of references..

Reply 1

Scotland Yard

Clearing and Applications Advisor, Universities Forum Helper

Eh, it depends. Turnitin is very trigger-happy and so very unreliable. We've been told to disregard the turnitin score in my course/university for this reason. If you've checked what has turnitin highlighted and none of it is plagiarism, you'll be fine!

Reply 2

University of Kent

Official Rep

Original post by Anonymous #1

Is 34% plagiarism too high on turn it in? I just handed in my assignment and got that, it also highlighted a lot of references..

Hi there

Turitin may often give unreliable similarity reports, so 34% may not actually be bad.
I would recommend checking through your essay and making sure you have referenced all the sources you have used. From my experience, if you have references all the resources you chose, you are unlikely to be caught for plagiarism.

I hope this helps.
Chloe
University of Kent Student Rep

Reply 3

gjd800

TurnItIn does not give 'unreliable' reports - this is a silly categorisation based upon a misunderstanding of how it works and how we (staff) use it.

It is itself a bit of a blunt tool. It will give a high similarity for things which are, well, similar. In this sense it is eminently 'reliable'.

The issue is that 'similarity' does not mean 'plagiarised', yet most students seem to think it does. A high similarity just means that a submission uses a lot of word phrases that have been used in the same order elsewhere. This can be for numerous reasons: the similarities are references, thus book and/or article titles; they are commonly-cited block quotes; it is other assorted commonly-cited data; it is plagiarised content.

You only need to worry about the latter if you have a) incorrectly cited, or b) consciously plagiarised.

All a score in the 30s does os prompt a human marker to take a closer look at the details, which are accurately, reliably, helpfully highlighted and linked in the marker's report.