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Turnitin

Turnitin is not a website where you can go to check your assignment, but software that is embedded into the Moodle sites for your courses. Unless your lecturer has set up a draft assignment submission, you won't be able to check your assignment in Turnitin before you submit it. Normally your marker looks at the Turnitin report to help them see how you have used your sources. You will be able to see your Turnitin report after your assignment has been marked and returned to you through Moodle. Turnitin is text-matching software. Turnitin cannot ‘detect plagiarism’ as text-matches can occur for many reasons. It needs human interpretation to see why the matches have occurred.

Scroll down for our recommended strategies and resources.

Understand how Turnitin is used

The University has thought carefully about the best ways to use Turnitin to support the academic development of students. You may have questions about what Turnitin is and how it is used. A good place to find answers to these questions is the University's Turnitin guidance page:

Student guidance and resources for Turnitin (Oxford Brookes University)

Interpret Turnitin matches

The overall similarity score in Turnitin doesn't directly tell you the level of plagiarism in a piece of work. You need to look carefully at each match to see whether it is an expected match or a sign of something more problematic. It is normal to have some matches to common academic features like contents pages, reference lists, and short academic phrases. It is important to know how to distinguish these acceptable matches from more problematic matches that show signs of copying and poor paraphrasing. Watch this video produced by Oxford Brookes showing how to interpret Turnitin matches. 

Using Turnitin yourself

If your lecturer has enabled the draft submission option for your assignment, you will be able to see your Turnitin report before the final submission. However, the aim of seeing your report is not simply to reduce the overall percentage match by changing some words around, as this could lead to an incomprehensible assignment. The purpose of seeing your report is to help you understand how you have used your sources. See this video on how to use Turnitin to improve your writing: 

Good study practices

If the draft submission option has not been enabled so you can't see your Turnitin report before the final submission, don't worry. If you have good study practices and have referenced correctly, there is nothing to be concerned about. See our pages for more on how to take good notes, paraphrase well, and reference correctly: 

Note-making resources (Centre for Academic Development)

Paraphrasing resources (Centre for Academic Development)

Referencing resources (Centre for Academic Development)

Academic Integrity

Plagiarism isn’t a trap to avoid, it is something you won’t need to worry about if you are aware of how to use sources well and how to credit other people for their ideas. This is part of having academic integrity. Find out why academic integrity is so important at university:  

Academic integrity resources (Centre for Academic Development)