What is Turnitin? - Features, Reports, and More | 3-Min Read

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Write by  Dr. Lily Chen
2024-12-06 14:57:57 5 min read

Curious about Turnitin? 

If you're a student or educator, knowing what it is is crucial. This article will guide you through its features, explain how institutions use it, and show how it can be a game-changer in your academic life. 

Whether you're submitting your first paper or managing a classroom, let’s explore Turnitin in just a few minutes!

What is Turnitin Banner

What is Turnitin?

Turnitin is a plagiarism detection tool created by the American company Turnitin, LLC, part of Advance Publications. Founded in 1998, Turnitin licenses its software to universities and high schools, which use it to check student papers against a vast database of academic works and online content to detect plagiarism.

Turnitin Banner

Besides identifying copied content, Turnitin offers features for grading and providing feedback. Its GradeMark tool allows educators to annotate students’ papers directly, offering corrections and comments, while rubric scorecards help standardize grading. Turnitin also runs plagiarism.org for educational purposes and offers iThenticate for professional content verification. Additionally, its PeerMark service supports peer-to-peer review among students.

Recent Developments in 2023

In early 2023, Turnitin introduced an AI writing detection feature, designed to identify content generated by artificial intelligence applications like ChatGPT. Currently, many universities and institutions collaborate with Turnitin, integrating it into their educational systems to promote academic integrity.

Turnitin AI Detector

How Turnitin Works / Using Turnitin

Turnitin is not an online tool available for direct public registration. Instead, it integrates directly with schools and educational institutions. These institutions receive a master account and then distribute access to faculty and staff, who are in charge of setting up and managing student access to the service. 

Students typically cannot access their own detailed Turnitin essay reports directly. However, if individuals wish to view Turnitin reports in advance, they can use services like EssayDone Turnitin Detector, which provides the reports without requiring a Turnitin account.

Using Turnitin For Educators

Educators prepare assignments in Turnitin by setting specific parameters such as deadlines and the type of report required. 

Once students submit their assignments, Turnitin scans them against its extensive database and the internet. It generates a report that details how much of the text matches existing sources and highlights any potential plagiarism. 

Additionally, educators receive comprehensive feedback tools, including similarity reports and AI detection indicators, which are crucial for identifying content potentially generated by AI tools. The similarity and AI scores are not definitive judgments but tools that help educators assess the originality of a paper more thoroughly.

Using Turnitin For Students

Students upload their assignments via the Turnitin website or through integrated tools available in their institution’s learning management system (LMS), like Canvas. Turnitin then processes the submissions and provides a similarity score, which shows the extent of text matching with sources in its database. 

Students can view their overall similarity score. However, more detailed information such as specific matched sources and the percentage of AI-generated content is typically accessible only to their instructors.

What is the Turnitin Report?

Similarity Report Generation

When a student submits a paper, Turnitin analyzes the content by comparing it with a comprehensive database that includes:

  • Student Papers: Works previously submitted by students across various institutions.

  • Web Content: Current and archived web pages.

  • Academic Publications: Articles from academic journals, books, and other publications.

  • For non-English text, Turnitin features a Translated Matching system. This function translates non-English text into English before comparing it against their English-language database. 

Typically, the generation of the Similarity Report, which includes both the similarity percentage and AI detection results, takes between a few minutes to 20 minutes. Users can then download the report, which uses different colors to highlight text that matches existing sources.

AI Writing Detection Feature 

A noteworthy component of the Similarity Report is the AI writing detection feature, available only to customers with the Turnitin Originality license. 

This feature displays the overall percentage of the document that may have been generated by AI writing tools, such as those based on the GPT-3, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4 models, including ChatGPT. The AI detection part of the report specifically highlights text segments predicted to have been written by AI, identifying both AI-generated content and AI paraphrased text.

As previously mentioned, only the teacher can view this report data. In the AI report, there are three possible AI detection outcomes:

  • 0%: Indicates no AI-generated content detected.

  • 20%-100%: Shows a specific value indicating the percentage of text determined to be AI-generated.

  • Low percentage (*%): Indicates that the AI content is suspected to be between 1% and 20%. To avoid false positives—where human-written text is mistakenly flagged as AI-generated—no specific score or highlights are shown for this range. An asterisk (*%) is used to indicate this uncertainty without attributing a percentage.

Turnitin report 56% detected as AI

Independence of Scores

It is important to note that the AI writing score and the similarity score are independent metrics within the report. The similarity score quantifies the percentage of text that matches sources within Turnitin’s vast content database, focused solely on textual similarity. Conversely, the AI writing detection percentage assesses the extent of text likely generated by AI tools. These two metrics operate independently to provide a comprehensive analysis of the text's originality and authenticity.

FAQ

1. What AI tools can Turnitin detect? 

Turnitin can detect content generated by AI writing tools such as GPT-3, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4 models, including ChatGPT.

2. Is Turnitin suitable for non-English texts? 

Turnitin's suitability for non-English texts depends on the features used. Its AI detection capabilities are currently only effective for English and Spanish texts. The AI paraphrase detection feature is only applicable to English.

3. Does Turnitin permanently store uploaded papers? 

Yes, unless specified otherwise by the institution, Turnitin typically stores uploaded papers to help maintain a comprehensive database for future plagiarism checks.

4. How accurate is Turnitin's AI writing detection? 

Turnitin asserts that its AI writing detection is highly accurate, boasting a false positive rate of less than 1% for documents containing 20% or more AI-generated text. However, for documents with less than 20% AI content, the detection becomes less reliable, leading to a higher rate of false positives. Additionally, some users have reported inaccuracies in the detection, suggesting variability in the tool's effectiveness across different scenarios.

5. What types of documents does Turnitin support? 

Turnitin supports a variety of document formats if the assignment allows any file type, provided the file:

  • Is less than 100MB.

  • Contains fewer than 800 pages.

For assignments requiring similarity checks, Turnitin accepts files that:

  • Are less than 100MB.

  • Contain at least 20 words.

  • Have fewer than 800 pages.

The specific formats that can generate Similarity Reports include:

  • Microsoft Word (.DOC and .DOCX)

  • Corel WordPerfect

  • HTML

  • Adobe PostScript

  • Plain text (.TXT)

  • Rich Text Format (RTF)

  • Portable Document Format (PDF)

  • OpenOffice (.ODT)

  • Hangul (.HWP and .HWPX)

  • PowerPoint (.PPTX)

  • Google Docs via Google Drive

6. How can you reduce similarity in Turnitin reports? 

To reduce similarity in Turnitin reports, ensure that citations and references are correctly formatted, paraphrase content properly while crediting original sources, and focus on creating original content rather than relying heavily on sourced material.

The Bottom Line 

Now that you've learned about Turnitin's powerful features and how it integrates into academic settings. 

Whether for submitting papers with confidence or ensuring the integrity of student work, Turnitin is an invaluable resource in education. 

Happy writing and grading!