Interpreting the Turnitin text-matching report

Turnitin text-matching reports provide valuable information for your assessment submissions.

Interpreting text-matching reports is essential. Reports provide an overall matching percentage which indicates how much of the submitted paper matches existing sources in the available databases. Reports also provide a break-down of each individual match indicating the matched text and the source of the match. It is recommended that each individual match is interpreted, with the view to determining whether the matched text constitutes plagiarism or not.

For example:

Direct quotes will be highlighted as matched text but are a legitimate use of source material, provided they have been enclosed in quotation marks and their source has been acknowledged correctly.
Matching may occur if you have not paraphrased adequately, and your work too closely resembles another person’s work, even if you have not copied text verbatim.
Sentences of a generic nature may be matched but would not constitute plagiarism if they are an inadvertent use of common knowledge (for example, 'Australia is a vast country with a relatively small population.').

To access the report, click on the “Submission details” link in the right of the screen in the FLO“Text-matching” course.

This will display the percentage score for your document , you must click this percentage score to view the similarity report.

The report will display your document with colour coding showing text matching on the left, and a list of the sources where the matches were found on the right.

Click on the matched numbers on the left side (Match Overview) to get more information about the source where the match was found.

Alternatively, click on the colour coded number on the right side for a summary of the match. Note that Turnitin will link to the first match it finds, it makes no determination about where the text was first published, or the original author.

If you click on a match in your document a window will appear showing you the details of the matched source.

It is important for you to know that the tool does not match against other students’ work in the current class until after the due date. This may mean the report percentage match may change if there is text matching with other students in your class (which could be for quite valid reasons, e.g. two or more people including the assignment question in the document).

If you wish to improve your work and resubmit it to generate another report, you can do so. Only one (1) report can be generated in the Text-matching course within a 24 hour period and one (1) report on any single assignment submission within a 24 hour period. Submitting a draft assignment to the Text-matching course does not prevent you from making a final assignment submission, as each will generate separate reports within a 24 hour period.

Please talk to your teaching staff or drop into the Learning Lounge in the Library for more information on interpreting the report. It may also prove helpful to see other examples of acceptable and unacceptable paraphrasing in the Paraphrasing and quoting study guide.