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I got 29% similarities would it affect my grade?

I did a essay and I got 29% similarities. My uni told me to use westlaw and Lexis for my referencing so I did. And then once I uploaded it, it said I got 29% similarities from other student papers. Then I checked what was similar it was my referencing saying I took all my referencing from student papers and my my turnitin higher would this affect my grade that I got a yellow on turnitin or nah?
Original post by Serennanaa
I did a essay and I got 29% similarities. My uni told me to use westlaw and Lexis for my referencing so I did. And then once I uploaded it, it said I got 29% similarities from other student papers. Then I checked what was similar it was my referencing saying I took all my referencing from student papers and my my turnitin higher would this affect my grade that I got a yellow on turnitin or nah?

Turnitin is only a similarity report. Similarity does not mean the highlighted section is plagiarism. What similarity means, is your academic will check if it is plagiarism using their own judgement after reviewing the source turnitin highlighted it being from.
Original post by Serennanaa
I did a essay and I got 29% similarities. My uni told me to use westlaw and Lexis for my referencing so I did. And then once I uploaded it, it said I got 29% similarities from other student papers. Then I checked what was similar it was my referencing saying I took all my referencing from student papers and my my turnitin higher would this affect my grade that I got a yellow on turnitin or nah?

Hi!

Please don't worry. TurnItIn is known for highlighting things for plagiarism that actually aren't. Your lecturers will be fully aware of this. I'd recommend checking what is highlighted and if it is just your references that's absolutely fine.

All it's doing is saying I've seen other people use these references before. Your lecturer will look and go yeah that's fine because you're allowed to reference from the same place as other people (otherwise it'd be impossible to do papers) and you'll be all good.

My turnitin also always likes to highlight any numbered bullet points, page numbers, contents and words that get used a lot because they are subject terms ie. "Turing Machine". This is also fine as it's clearly not plagiarism. The only time I'd worry is if it's highlighting a lot of full sentences and if that happens then maybe email your lecturer or personal tutor to get some clarification but if you haven't plagiarised then you'd probably be able to sort that out too :smile:

I hope this helps!

- Jessica
2nd year, Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence)

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