turn it in . com question

[moejoe]

I submitted a paper through turn it in.com today, but I couldn’t figure out how to ask it to exclude the bibliography.

In any case the “originality” score was 15% (with a green bar), does anyone know if that’s a good score or if I’m doomed?

thanks

[Kimstu]

You cool, bro:

The color of the report icon indicates the overall sim-
ilarity index of the paper, based on how much match-
ing text we found. The possible similarity indices are:
• blue (no matching text)
• green (1 word-24% matching text)
• yellow (25-49% matching text)
• orange (50-74% matching text)
• red (75-100% matching text)

The so-called “originality score” should really be “unoriginality score”, since it purports to measure how much of your paper matches other sources.

Since there can be lots of overlap between sources and original compositions in things like factual data, quotes, etc., acceptable levels of matching can be significantly higher than 0%. Your score of 15% matching is quite within the reasonable range for a non-plagiarized paper.

[moejoe]

@Kimstu

You cool, bro:
The so-called “originality score” should really be “unoriginality score”, since it purports to measure how much of your paper matches other sources.

Since there can be lots of overlap between sources and original compositions in things like factual data, quotes, etc., acceptable levels of matching can be significantly higher than 0%. Your score of 15% matching is quite within the reasonable range for a non-plagiarized paper.

thanks for the quick reply. I guess I rock and so do you

[Kimstu]

You’re welcome! On behalf of other college professors everywhere, I thank you for taking the trouble to do your own work and not making us bust your ass for copying it off the internet.

[ToeJam]

@Kimstu

You’re welcome! On behalf of other college professors everywhere, I thank you for taking the trouble to do your own work and not making us bust your ass for copying it off the internet.

I guess I have an add on question/thought to this- why would anyone have to check their OWN paper on turnitin? Wouldn’t you already know if you had properly cited and done your work or copied it from somewhere else? Or is this a common practice, just to check your own work there to see how you measure up?

[antonio107]

@ToeJam

I guess I have an add on question/thought to this- why would anyone have to check their OWN paper on turnitin? Wouldn’t you already know if you had properly cited and done your work or copied it from somewhere else? Or is this a common practice, just to check your own work there to see how you measure up?

As a T.A., I’ve had unfortunate instances in first year courses where a well meaning student copied too many words in a row, thinking they were in the clear. Granted, they might just be bold faced liars, but it’s better to be over zealous than careless!

[lazybratsche]

I’ve caught myself in that sort of unintentional plagiarism before. I read a stack of papers, think really hard about how to phrase a particular bit of evidence, and end up reproducing a few sentences from one of my sources nearly verbatim. If I knew my profs were using turnitin, I’d definitely run my papers before turning them in just to avoid situations like that.

[LSLGuy]

Fairly recent thread on topic: Don't even try to tell us it's not plagiarized! - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board

From my reading of it, it seems that more and more unis are requiring students to use this “service”.

[moejoe]

@LSLGuy

Fairly recent thread on topic: Don't even try to tell us it's not plagiarized! - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board

From my reading of it, it seems that more and more unis are requiring students to use this “service”.

yep, it’s required. Submit to turnitin and then hand in a hard copy. I thought I would hate it but it’s actually handy for figuring out if I’ve forgotten to close a quote or done a poor job of paraphrasing.