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Uni Students, please answer my question ...

How do Uni's test for plagiarism. Do they copy and paste your assignment into some sort of app or website which checks for plagiarism?
How do uni's work out if you have plagiarised something?
Original post by Anonymous
How do Uni's test for plagiarism. Do they copy and paste your assignment into some sort of app or website which checks for plagiarism?
How do uni's work out if you have plagiarised something?


Most of them use Turnitin or similar plagiarism software. You upload your work through the software on an online portal (ie you don't just attach it in an email to your tutor).
Reply 2
Original post by threeportdrift
Most of them use Turnitin or similar plagiarism software. You upload your work through the software on an online portal (ie you don't just attach it in an email to your tutor).

ok, thx you
are students able to use turnitin to check for plagiarism before they submit assignments via the uni online portal? i've never plagiarised but always get paranoid that there may be an article or a website which has written something similar to what i have discussed in an assignment.
Original post by Anonymous
ok, thx you
are students able to use turnitin to check for plagiarism before they submit assignments via the uni online portal? i've never plagiarised but always get paranoid that there may be an article or a website which has written something similar to what i have discussed in an assignment.


Depends on the uni and how it is set up, but unlikely. Once you put it through Turnitin, it's submitted, so if you submit the same thing again, it's 100% the same as something Turnitin has seen before! Learn how not to plagiarise - that's the point.
Original post by Anonymous
How do Uni's test for plagiarism. Do they copy and paste your assignment into some sort of app or website which checks for plagiarism?
How do uni's work out if you have plagiarised something?


It will be inbuilt into the submissions portal. (as above it will likely be turnitin).

Some unis have plagarism checkers but not all assignments do, some share your score with you after submission.

If you follow the academic guidelines & assignment instructions you dont need to worry.
Reply 5
Original post by threeportdrift
Depends on the uni and how it is set up, but unlikely. Once you put it through Turnitin, it's submitted, so if you submit the same thing again, it's 100% the same as something Turnitin has seen before! Learn how not to plagiarise - that's the point.

ok, thx u
Reply 6
Original post by mnot
It will be inbuilt into the submissions portal. (as above it will likely be turnitin).

Some unis have plagarism checkers but not all assignments do, some share your score with you after submission.

If you follow the academic guidelines & assignment instructions you dont need to worry.

i've included all the websites, books, etc that i used in my bibliography and i have footnoted parts where i have quoted directly
Reply 7
Original post by mnot
It will be inbuilt into the submissions portal. (as above it will likely be turnitin).

Some unis have plagarism checkers but not all assignments do, some share your score with you after submission.

If you follow the academic guidelines & assignment instructions you dont need to worry.


Original post by threeportdrift
Most of them use Turnitin or similar plagiarism software. You upload your work through the software on an online portal (ie you don't just attach it in an email to your tutor).

how many words and or sentences would it take for you to copy before it would be flagged up by turnitin that u have plagiarised. if you copy for example a 10 word sentence, would it flag that up?
Original post by Anonymous
i've included all the websites, books, etc that i used in my bibliography and i have footnoted parts where i have quoted directly

I dont know your unis rules & what your assignment brief was, but in general if you used relevant resources & cited them correctly you should be fine.

Original post by Anonymous
how many words and or sentences would it take for you to copy before it would be flagged up by turnitin that u have plagiarised. if you copy for example a 10 word sentence, would it flag that up?

You will get a score overall as a percentage.
Im not sure if their is an amount of words specifically, or how the algorithm works, It has a system that identifies a % similarity and it will show the university where it found the similarities so unis can check for themselves and compare to your citations etc.

Generally similarity score is not an issue, unis normally leave breathing room so anything up to say 20% is not even looked at, ones which have higher similarity might be checked but as long as they were cited correctly it should still be fine.

(although the system does tend pick up odd things here & their, dont be alarmed if your reference section get highlighted this is normal in my experience).
(edited 3 years ago)
Original post by Anonymous
How do Uni's test for plagiarism. Do they copy and paste your assignment into some sort of app or website which checks for plagiarism?
How do uni's work out if you have plagiarised something?

Hiya!

The majority of uni's use Turnitin as the software that checks for plagiarism. The submission page will be available for you to turn in your work and for all of my previous submission I have been allowed three attempts to turn my work in (which means that you can check what your percentage of similarity is before finally handing it in). The software checks for exact phrases that may have been copied from any of your previously handed in work, other students work, websites, books, articles, etc. When you get your response and feedback returned Turnitin shows you a breakdown of your similarity to help you know what you need to improve on.

Sam- Official Student Rep :smile:
Original post by mnot
I dont know your unis rules & what your assignment brief was, but in general if you used relevant resources & cited them correctly you should be fine.


You will get a score overall as a percentage.
Im not sure if their is an amount of words specifically, or how the algorithm works, It has a system that identifies a % similarity and it will show the university where it found the similarities so unis can check for themselves and compare to your citations etc.

Generally similarity score is not an issue, unis normally leave breathing room so anything up to say 20% is not even looked at, ones which have higher similarity might be checked but as long as they were cited correctly it should still be fine.

(although the system does tend pick up odd things here & their, dont be alarmed if your reference section get highlighted this is normal in my experience).


Original post by University of Portsmouth Student Rep
Hiya!

The majority of uni's use Turnitin as the software that checks for plagiarism. The submission page will be available for you to turn in your work and for all of my previous submission I have been allowed three attempts to turn my work in (which means that you can check what your percentage of similarity is before finally handing it in). The software checks for exact phrases that may have been copied from any of your previously handed in work, other students work, websites, books, articles, etc. When you get your response and feedback returned Turnitin shows you a breakdown of your similarity to help you know what you need to improve on.

Sam- Official Student Rep :smile:

ok, thx both of you xx
i need to submit my first assignment by 23:59 today and i have been worried about plagiarism, especially as this is my first assignment and i am getting used to things like footnotes, bibliography etc. i have been frantically copy and pasting various different sentences from my assignment into google to try and make sure that i haven't plagiarised anything
Original post by Anonymous
how many words and or sentences would it take for you to copy before it would be flagged up by turnitin that u have plagiarised. if you copy for example a 10 word sentence, would it flag that up?

Possibly, would depend what the 10 words are. Sometimes systems will flag things up, but when a person actually looks at it they'll see it was a pretty generic sentence. If you've directly copied a sentence that's quite specific and unlikely to be written by someone else, then maybe it'd be more obvious you've plagiarised. But in the grand scheme of things it's unlikely to have a big impact, 10 words out of a 1000 word assignment would be 1%.

It's pretty rare for someone to hand in work with a plagiarism score of 0%, if nothing else automated systems can be a bit daft and flag the title of your assignment or your references, simply because everyone is writing the same thing. But unis aren't looking for that sort of stuff, the issue is plagiarising large chunks or repeatedly throughout the assignment. In this case you are being paranoid for no reason.

Of course there is a very simple way to never get pulled up on plagiarism. Don't plagiarise. If you never copy anything, you'll never have a problem. The odds of writing a couple of words the same as someone else isn't small. But writing multiple sentences or paragraphs perfectly identical? That's unlikely.
Original post by Anonymous
how many words and or sentences would it take for you to copy before it would be flagged up by turnitin that u have plagiarised. if you copy for example a 10 word sentence, would it flag that up?


Again, it depend how your uni has set it up. At my uni, everything went through a Turnitin portal, you only had one chance to upload, and the student go no feedback/score at all.
Original post by University of Portsmouth Student Rep
Hiya!

The majority of uni's use Turnitin as the software that checks for plagiarism. The submission page will be available for you to turn in your work and for all of my previous submission I have been allowed three attempts to turn my work in (which means that you can check what your percentage of similarity is before finally handing it in). The software checks for exact phrases that may have been copied from any of your previously handed in work, other students work, websites, books, articles, etc. When you get your response and feedback returned Turnitin shows you a breakdown of your similarity to help you know what you need to improve on.

Sam- Official Student Rep :smile:

Just to cover all bases I think its worth mentioning the uni can normally tune the submission portal.
-SO they can allow a fixed number of submissions
-They can cap it at 1 submission
-Or they can allow as many submissions as you like before the deadline
Also:
Unis can choose to show you similarity score
& give you a brakdown but they dont have to do this.

What you've described is pretty normal. All im saying is dont worry if its not like this.
Original post by Anonymous
ok, thx both of you xx
i need to submit my first assignment by 23:59 today and i have been worried about plagiarism, especially as this is my first assignment and i am getting used to things like footnotes, bibliography etc. i have been frantically copy and pasting various different sentences from my assignment into google to try and make sure that i haven't plagiarised anything

Relax.
First assignment.
Go celebrate, soon you will be normalised to turnitin & this process.
Original post by AcseI
Possibly, would depend what the 10 words are. Sometimes systems will flag things up, but when a person actually looks at it they'll see it was a pretty generic sentence. If you've directly copied a sentence that's quite specific and unlikely to be written by someone else, then maybe it'd be more obvious you've plagiarised. But in the grand scheme of things it's unlikely to have a big impact, 10 words out of a 1000 word assignment would be 1%.

It's pretty rare for someone to hand in work with a plagiarism score of 0%, if nothing else automated systems can be a bit daft and flag the title of your assignment or your references, simply because everyone is writing the same thing. But unis aren't looking for that sort of stuff, the issue is plagiarising large chunks or repeatedly throughout the assignment. In this case you are being paranoid for no reason.

Of course there is a very simple way to never get pulled up on plagiarism. Don't plagiarise. If you never copy anything, you'll never have a problem. The odds of writing a couple of words the same as someone else isn't small. But writing multiple sentences or paragraphs perfectly identical? That's unlikely.


Original post by threeportdrift
Again, it depend how your uni has set it up. At my uni, everything went through a Turnitin portal, you only had one chance to upload, and the student go no feedback/score at all.


Original post by mnot
Just to cover all bases I think its worth mentioning the uni can normally tune the submission portal.
-SO they can allow a fixed number of submissions
-They can cap it at 1 submission
-Or they can allow as many submissions as you like before the deadline
Also:
Unis can choose to show you similarity score
& give you a brakdown but they dont have to do this.

What you've described is pretty normal. All im saying is dont worry if its not like this.

thank you everyone xx, i feel much more reassured now xx, im going to submit my assignment now xx
Yea as others said it'll be some form of Turnitin software, but it can vary a bit

At my uni you were allowed to edit your submission as much as you wanted before the cutoff time and we were allowed to instantly see our own turnitin reports and get a look, past a certain % it will flag it for human review. Sometimes a highish score (15-20%?) is unavoidable, either through references, quotes, headings or common sentences but it's v quick for lecturer to skim the report and see if there's anything genuine.

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