- What is Turnitin.com?
- How does Turnitin work?
- What are "term paper mills"? What are "digital paper mills"?
- How do you keep from having too many matches for common papers -- for instance, ones dealing with frequently taught material like Hamlet or To Kill a Mockingbird?
- Can a manuscript written over ten years ago be checked for plagiarized material?
- Does Turnitin check against newspaper articles and books to ensure that students have not cut-and-pasted from them?
- How are papers uploaded?
- Is there a size/length limitation to uploads?
- Are uploaded papers from individuals or from courses confidential?
Q: What is Turnitin.com? [top]
Turnitin.com is a Web-based plagiarism detection service. Turnitin.com has a database of over a million papers submitted to them, a digitized version of the Gutenberg Collection of Literary Classics, and papers pulled from the Internet and various "paper mills," (i.e., services that sell term papers). The parent organization of Turnitin.com is Plagiarism.org. You may want to click the Research Resources link on their web page for tips on how to prevent plagiarism in the first place.
19 Dec 2006 <http://www.uah.edu/library/turnitin/faq.htm>.
Q:How does Turnitin work? [top]
Turnitin allows the student or educator to upload a paper into the Turnitin database, and the software will then use algorithms to create “digital fingerprints” that can identify similar patterns in text. Then the paper is matched to billions of web pages, paper mill essays, and student papers submitted online. Turnitin creates an “originality report” that records any passages from the paper that might not be authentic, and lists web sites and other resources that include previously submitted papers that have matched content to the passages.
19 Dec 2006 <http://www.uah.edu/library/turnitin/faq.htm>.
Q. What are "term paper mills"? What are "digital paper mills"? [top]
Paper mills are organizations that either sell or give away pre-written term papers for use by students looking for a way to avoid doing the assignments themselves. Digital term paper mills are sites that exist on the Internet for the same purpose. These online groups are not constrained by the need to generate revenue by selling their manuscripts; the "free" sites typically receive their money from advertising. Examples of such sites include Evil House of Cheat (CheatHouse.com) and Free Essay Network (freeessay.com).
18 Dec 2006 <http://www.pitt.edu/~ciddeweb/TURNITIN/faq.htm>.
Q: How do you keep from having too many matches for common papers -- for instance, ones dealing with frequently taught material like Hamlet or To Kill a Mockingbird? [top]
Document source analysis is carefully calibrated to eliminate as many trivial matches as possible, while still identifying relevant matching passages. This calibration makes use of extensive analysis of language patterns, word frequencies, and other advanced techniques to minimize "noise" without losing key information.
18 Dec 2006 <http://www.at.ufl.edu/~turnitin/faq.html>.
Q. Can a manuscript written over ten years ago be checked for plagiarized material? [top]
Since it was written 10 years ago, there is certainly a chance the material it could be copied from is not online. However, as the Internet's content increases exponentially, the likelihood of not detecting a copied source becomes less and less.
18 Dec 2006 <http://www.pitt.edu/~ciddeweb/TURNITIN/faq.htm>.
Q: Does Turnitin check against newspaper articles and books to ensure that students have not cut-and-pasted from them? [top]
Yes. The majority of the world's newspapers and periodicals DO reside on the Internet. Manuscripts are checked against these digital sources along with the billions of pages on the Web. Unfortunately, not all literature resides on the Internet. However, if a book was to be placed somewhere on the Internet, we would be able to detect future instances of its use.
18 Dec 2006 <http://www.at.ufl.edu/~turnitin/faq.html>.
Q: How are papers uploaded? [top]
The process is simple. Students or faculty log into their Turnitin.com account(s), find the appropriate class(es), and then either: a) "copy-and-paste" their paper into a text box and click "submit," or b) browse for a file (just like an email attachment) and submit it. Turnitin accepts file uploads in a number of formats, including MS Word, MS Excel, plain text, RTF, PDF and Postscript. If the paper does not already exist in digital format, it can be scanned with OCR software and then uploaded by either of the two above methods.
18 Dec 2006 <http://www.at.ufl.edu/~turnitin/faq.html>.
Q. Is there a size/length limitation to uploads? [top]
Turnitin has the capacity to accept approximately 10 MB of text (that's a book length size of digital material).
18 Dec 2006 <http://www.pitt.edu/~ciddeweb/TURNITIN/faq.htm>.
Q: Are uploaded papers from individuals or from courses confidential? [top]
Yes. The paper will not be released without author or instructor permission.
18 Dec 2006 <http://www.at.ufl.edu/~turnitin/faq.html>.
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