December 2, 2024, by Laura Nicholson

Turnitin Assignment Similarity Checker – Test Your Text

(Estimated reading time: 2 min 30)

At the University of Nottingham, like in other institutions, student assignment papers often undergo assessment through the Turnitin service. This post will cover frequently asked questions about Turnitin and the Test Your Text service available to students at the university.

1: What is a similarity report?

Once you have submitted an assignment to Turnitin, it is checked against submitted assignments for similarities against a vast database of academic and non-academic content. Turnitin then generates a similarity report, which will highlight phrases or sections that show a similarity with other sources, and a score is also created, which represents the percentage of similarity between your assignment and other material. This helps educators determine the originality of the assignment and identify potential plagiarism.

Depending on how you set up your Turnitin assignment, it will affect whether students can see their similarity report or not.

For general support with using Turnitin, please see the All about Turnitin Workspace page.

 

2: Does a high Turnitin similarity score automatically indicate plagiarism?

Not necessarily! There are a number of reasons why a high score may have been received. Some examples include:

• Some of the reference list or bibliography was identified as plagiarised because the sources have been used in other students work. The lecturer can check this by selecting the option to ‘remove bibliography’ when checking similarity scores.
• If you have been given a template to use when completing your assignment, Turnitin may identify similarities with the work of other students because you are all using the same template.
• Technical terms involving small strings of words may be identified as plagiarised.

That said, a high similarity score in some cases can indicate an overreliance on the work of others. In all cases, it is best to check that you have referenced and cited your work correctly. For more support and guidance with writing to avoid plagiarism, please see studying effectively.

3: Should I be aiming for a 0% similarity score?

The ideal is definitely not a 0% match. It is perfectly normal for an assignment to match against some of Turnitin’s databases. Even if a student has used quotes and has referenced correctly, there will be instances where a match will be found. Ultimately, it’s up to academics and midconduct officers to use the similarity score and report as a tool to make an informed judgement.

4: What is Test Your Text?

The University of Nottingham provides the option for students to check their assignment for possible text-matching with other sources before submission. Test your text, which can be found under the ‘More’ tab of every Moodle page.

Students should self-enrol on the Test Your Text module at their campus of study, or if staff members, self-enrol at the campus at which they work.

Once enrolled, scroll down the Moodle page, and you will find the test drop-box to upload your assignment. If there is a high volume of submissions during the time you upload, it can take up to 24 hours for the originality report to be generated.

5: If I submit my assignment to Test Your Text, will it show as plagiarised when I submit the final version at a later date?

When a paper is submitted to your assignment’s Turnitin dropbox, the papers are generally saved to the Turnitin repository database. This is to ensure that if the same paper (or parts of the paper) is submitted again, Turnitin will be able to find the match and flag it as possible plagiarism.

However, when you submit to Test Your Text, your assignment is not stored in the Turnitin repository database. This means when you submit your final assignment to your dropbox, there will be no match to your earlier Test Your Text copy.

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