Turnitin - Plagiarism Prevention Tool

Use Turnitin.com to check for instances of plagiarism!

This web-based system is open to WOU Academic staff, tutor and student to use. For WOU students, refer your Tutor/Lecturer if you need to passage your assignment(s) to the Turnitin system before submission to encourage honest academic writing.

1. What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is commited when you claim someone else's work as your own. As you pursue your education, it is essential to uphold integrity and take responsibility in your research and writing.

There are many types of plagiarism but those commonly committed by students are as listed below:

Word-for-word plagiarism This involves lifting sentences or phrases from other writers' materials and inserting it into your research paper without acknowledging the sources. It is the most common form of plagiarism and also the most easily identifiable because either the style and quality of writing does not match your own or your supervisors have done some checking
Using another writer's ideas without acknowledging the source If you are using another writer's creative idea or suggested solution to a problem, you must acknowledge your sources by using footnotes or endnotes.

However, it is not necessary to acknowledge public domain information which is accepted as general information that everybody knows e.g. historical facts and dates, geographic areas, folklore, established principles within a certain field. You may use the information freely even if you had looked it up in a reference book.
Acknowledging the source but reproducing the passage without quotation marks This is to mislead your supervisor into thinking that you have paraphrase the information rather than copying word-for-word.
Paraphasing the source too closely and not giving due credit This is a case of following a source article sentence-by-sentence or paragraph-by-paragraph. The sentences may not be the same as in the original source but you are copying the author's reasoning style.
Borrowing all or part of another student work It is natural for friends to help each other and to borrow notes. However, you must write your own paper and not submit your friend's paper as your own.
Paying someone to write the paper for you or buying paper online You will be tempted to pay someone to write the paper for you or visit the known Websites to purchase a paper especially if you work to last-minute deadline.

No matter how desperate you are, you should not resort to this action as such papers are usually of low quality and often do not address the questions posed. Moreover, this is direct plagiarism and the consequences of being caught may be severe.


2. What is Turnitin?

  • Turnitin is a web-based text-matching learning tool system that works by comparing electronically submitted papers to billions of pages of content located on the Internet and proprietary databases as well as the work of other students whose papers have also been submitted into the system.
  • Turnitin is part of the University's educational approach to minimize plagiarism and ensure standards of academic honesty. Be clear of what is your own work and acknowledge the work and ideas of others correctly. Providing proper citation is an important part of academic writing.

3. What does Turnitin do?

  • Turnitin scans your written work against other sources in its database looking for matching text. Sections that matched with other sources are highlighted and identified.
  • It can help you identify where your source of information comes from and check on your citations. The information provided may suggest that your work has been plagiarized.
  • It also provides you with information about correct citations and where you can find more help in your academicriting.
  • The analysis of submitted paper will generate Turnitin Originality Report and Overall Similarity Index which will be made available to you. The colour of the report indicates:

Rank Similarity Index Colour Description
1 Blue Less than 20 matching words
2 Green 0-24% matching text
3 Yellow 25-49% matching text
4 Orange 50-74% matching text
5 Red 75-100% matching text
  • You can print or download the Originality Reports to use for future reference or as a proof that your written paper has been checked.

4. What can I submit to Turnitin?
  • Turnitin accepts submission of documents in the following formats: Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, PDF, RTF, PostScript, HTML, plain text (.txt).
  • Turnitin only accepts document size limit of not more than 20 MB. Kindly note that Turnitin cannot read password protected documents, please ensure that you do not save your document in this way.
  • The processing time to generate Originality Report for each submission depends very much on the file size of the document and network traffic. For example, a 15-20 pages document will take not more than 15 minutes. However it will take up to 24 hours for resubmission documents. You can resubmit multiple drafts of your written document for checking. Your newer draft will overwrite the older one.

5. Turnitin tutorial support for Students

            Part 1 - Create student Turnitin account  (One-time registration, must use one (1) WOU email account only)
          
           Part 2 - Enrol courses, submit assignment and view Turnitin Originality report