TurnItIn FAQs

Can I apply TurnItIn plagiarism review to assignments retroactively? 

Yes, you must edit the assignment details to turn on Plagiarism Review (and select TurnItIn). Then, in SpeedGrader, for each student’s submission you must click “Re-Submit to TurnItIn.”

In cases of potential student-to-student plagiarism, does it matter who submits first?

Yes. If Student A copies of the work of Student B, but Student A submits to Canvas first, Student B will be the one flagged for similarity to Student A’s assignment. To avoid this situation, when setting up the assignment, select “Immediately and on due date.” When this is selected, submissions will be analyzed immediately and then again after the selected due date. If a similarity is noted between 2 submissions, it will be flagged on both submissions. 

When a student’s work matches with another student’s work (Submitted Works), can I determine the identity of the student they matched with? 

Because of student privacy, this is not possible. 

What sources does TurnItIn check work against? 

three different sources: The internet, published material and previously submitted student material:

● 1.2 billion global student papers
● 99 billion web pages indexed and an additional 22 million web pages added daily
● 2,000 publisher relationships that include 95% of the top 100 research journals

How can I make sure that TurnItIn checks against a particular source (URL)? 

You can use this page to add URLs to TurnItIn's Content Database: https://go.turnitin.com/request-url-indexing

If there are no issues accessing the page (for example: page is password-protected or behind paywall), TurnItIn will add it to their web crawler’s routine and let you know within 3 business days whether the URLs you requested can be added. 

How is quoted text handled? 

There is an option to exclude quotes (text between quotation marks) from the Similarity Report. This option can be enabled at the time the assignment is set up, or after analysis (from inside the Similarity Report). When the option is enabled post-analysis, the Overall Similarity percentage will be lowered.

If someone at another university matches with one of our students’ Submitted Works, what will they see?  

They will not see text or any identifying information about the student. 

How do you address privacy and security for students and my institution?
From TurnItIn's documentation: Turnitin respects your privacy and vigorously protects your personal data. We work hard to achieve extremely high levels of security through the use of appropriate technical and organizational measures, which are described in more detail on our Privacy Page.

What does Turnitin do with a student’s submissions?
Every time an assignment is set up to use Turnitin, the user has the option to allow Turnitin to index the assignment. This is an option for every user, and not required. If the user does select to have Turnitin index the student submission, then this will allow Turnitin to show matches with that content in future assignments submitted. The student/author always owns all intellectual property rights to their own work. Turnitin only uses this indexed information to provide a matching service. See TurnItIn's Privacy Page for more information. Contact at legal@turnitin.com for more information

Can I, as a faculty member, contact TurnItIn support? How? 

Yes, you may contact support@turnitin.com. But you can also direct your questions to your Canvas admin.

How are multiple submissions handled?

If you set up a Canvas assignment to allow for multiple submission attempts, each submission will be checked, analyzed, and assigned a similarity score. In SpeedGrader, you can toggle between a student’s submissions, and for each submission you will be able to see the Similarity Score and access the Similarity Report for each submission. All submission attempts will be submitted to the TurnItIn database (unless you indicate otherwise), so that attempts to plagiarize from any version of a student’s assignment by another student will be flagged. A student’s subsequent submissions for a single assignment will not match as similar to his/her own previous submissions for that assignment (they will not be flagged for “self-plagiarism”). However, if you intend to make separate Canvas assignments for each draft of a particular assignment (in other words, there will be columns for First draft, Final draft, etc. in the gradebook), submissions to the later assignment will match with the submissions from the previous assignment because they are in the database. In that case, if you intend to make separate assignments for each draft, you should uncheck "index all submissions" when setting up the first assignments.

Does TurnItIn match content on websites such as CourseHero?

As per our TurnItIn rep: "Turntin does match content from Course Hero.  However, it is going to look like a match to one or more students from your university or another school.  The match will not say "Course Hero' as the source.  As long as just one student uses some content from Course Hero, the remaining students who use some degree of that content will start matching to the first student.  

Turnitin is used by most colleges and universities so its relatively easy and quick for Turnitin to index the Course Hero or Chegg work, etc. and show matches to it."

Can TurnItIn detect AI-generated writing, from ChatGPT or other bots?

In April 2023, TurnItIn released AI writing detection capabilities. They were made available for testing to all existing TurnItIn customers through January 1, 2024. After that date, AI-writing detection became an optional add-on that would require a new license plan. As of August 2024, FSU has not elected to add this feature to its license. Please read TurnItIn's FAQs about AI detection.

As an instructor, can I submit a paper to be checked by TurnItIn outside of Canvas?

Yes, there is a TurnItIn web portal that you may access. A TurnItIn admin must first set up an account for you. email Eto@framingham.edu to request access.

Can papers be removed from the TurnItIn database?

Yes, this can be done by an administrator here in the TurnItIn administrator hub as described in this guide. Instructors and/or students, please reach out to eto@framingham.edu if you need this to be done.

[Admin Portal] In the Submissions Details (Statistics), why do some of the entries look strange?

If the submission was a Group assignment, the email address of the submitter will appear as a long string of characters followed by "@fake.fake, and the name will appear as “group user.” TurnItIn *does* check these submissions for similarity but does not record metadata. Obviously, it also does not check the group members against one another (provided the assignment was set up properly as a group assignment in Canvas).