Interpret the Turnitin Similarity Report

Summary

This article explains how faculty can interpret Turnitin’s similarity report to determine if plagiarism may have occurred.

Instructions

After accessing the Turnitin similarity report, note the assignment’s similarity score, which ranges from 0% to 100% and is color coded:
1. Blue: No matching text
2. Green: One word to 24% matching text
3. Yellow: 25-49% matching text
4. Orange: 50-74% matching text
5. Red: 75-100% matching text
According to Turnitin, a “similarity score is a percentage of a paper's content that matches to Turnitin's databases; it is not an assessment of whether the paper includes plagiarized material.” Therefore faculty will need to do the following to assess whether plagiarism may have occurred:
1. View similarity matches
2. View sources
3. Refine the similarity report
4. Exclude quotes and bibliographic material