Turnitin is a program for checking similarities in texts. Turnitin compares written text to an extensive international database of articles, journals, books, websites, and student submissions, and looks for similarities between the submitted text and the sources in the database. Turnitin provides a feedback report which includes a similarity index (percentage), which demonstrates how much similarities can be found between the submitted text and the texts in Turnitin databases. By interpreting the report, it can be deduced whether the text has been plagiarised or not.

It is important to remember that similarity does not necessarily mean plagiarism! The percentage is always proportional to the length of the text. Short texts can demonstrate a higher percentage than a longer text. Quotations and reference list (bibliography) are also taken into account in the report, which also increases the similarity percentage. There is no need to aim for zero percent; it may even be impossible to achieve. There is no need to be afraid or nervous about using Turnitin! Turnitin is specifically designed to correct and assist in the writing of scientific text, as well as to expose intentional plagiarism.

Turnitin is integrated into Moodle: teachers use it to review assignments, reports or theses. Students can submit their texts to Turnitin only if the teacher has assigned a specific Turnitin assignment.

Why do you use Turnitin?

• It helps you to write source-based text with your own words.
• It helps you to write academically correct and fluent text.
• The software gives you feedback from the text you write.
• With the report you can be guided to revise your work on time.
• The report also detects plagiarism and checking of all theses ensures equal treatment of students.

Saving to the repository

Turnitin submission may have the saving to the repository enabled. That feature is not visible for students, but you can ask your teacher if the saving is enabled or disabled. If you do not want the work to be saved to the repository, you should contact the teacher to agree on an alternative method of Turnitin check. A LUTPub or Theseus publication will automatically be entered into the Turnitin repository after a certain period of time.

If you want to delete your work that is saved to the repository, you can contact your teacher. The teacher can ask the deletion from Opetushelp.

Saving to repository means that your submission is saved in the Turnitin database. If the submission is in the database, it can be used to assess the similarity of other submissions (i.e. future submissions by other Turnitin users can be compared to the work in the database).

In some situations, a user in the “instructor” role in Turnitin at our own university or another external party using Turnitin can request to see the full text of the work in the database. The full text is not displayed automatically, but requests to see the full text of works saved in the database through Turnitin at LUT Universities, for example, are processed by the LUT Universities’ Turnitin administrator users.

The submissions in the database are not publicly accessible. If the submissions made by others are similar to the work in the database, these similarities will be visible to other users.

Allowed file types

Please remember to check that your submission is in a file type that can be checked for similarity. Please note that Turnitin does not work, for example, with protected Word files, or with a PDF file that contains only images of the text instead of text (you can try to copy the text from the PDF to some other place – if this won’t work,
the file most probably doesn’t contain text, but instead images of text). You can find the exact file requirements on the Turnitin help page.

AI detection add-on

An AI detection add-on visible to teachers is in use in Turnitin submissions. The add-on searches for AI-generated text. Similarity detection works as before.

Recommendations for the use of AI at LAB and LUT can be found on eLAB's AI-based tools policies page.

New enhanced Similarity Report

The Turnitin feature for Moodle Assignment and Forum activities has a new enhanced Similarity Report. You can find instructions on how to use the new report from Turnitin Guides page “Student overview of the new Similarity Report experience”.

Instructions

• Turnitin guide for students below in Files section.
• Instructions for the new enhanced Similarity Report (in use with the Turnitin feature for Moodle Assignment and Forum activities) on Turnitin Guides page “Student overview of the new Similarity Report experience”.
• Instructional video by @Pedatiimi for submitting a work and checking a Turnitin report and teacher's comments in "Turnitin assignment 2" activity.
• Instructional video by @Pedatiimi for submitting a work and checking a Turnitin report and teacher's comments in "Assignment" activity.