Originality Report - Interpreting Results

The Originality Reports provide a summary of the matching text found in a submitted paper. It is perfectly natural for an assignment to match against some of our database. If a student has used quotes and has referenced correctly, there will be instances where we will find a match. The similarity score simply highlights any potential problem areas in a student's paper. Instructors can use this as a tool within their review process to make their own determination if any academic misconduct has occurred.

The percentage indicates the overall similarity index of the paper, based on how much matching text was found (as a percentage of the total text in the submission). A breakdown of the indexes with the colour code is listed below:

0% (a valid result) - Blue icon
1-24% - Green icon
25-49% - Yellow icon
50-74% - Orange icon
75-100% - Red icon

Once you see the percentage icon, it means that the report has generated. If you click on the icon, the report will load for you.

Turnitin does not determine whether a paper has or has not been plagiarized. Originality Reports are simply tools to help instructors locate potential sources of plagiarism, or text which may have been incorrectly cited. Therefore, only instructors can deem what is a "good" or "bad" score, as interpretation of the data can only be made by the instructor.

For more information, see The similarity report and Similarity report exclusions.

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