What and Why of Turnitin Report?
When students are assigned with assignment writing task, there are a few important points that need to be considered quite precisely. Like the assignment should be well-structured, title & sub-titles should be eye-catching, or composed according to the college guidelines. But, what more important is that it should be written from scratch and should be original. Well, no matter how much you have put efforts to write the content from the scratch, there are chances that document may have some traces of plagiarism. So, it is quite important for you to have some proof of your authentic work and the most valuable proof that you can have with yourself for showing how much your content is authentic, is Turnitin Report.
What Is Turnitin Report?
It is the report that is generated after comparing the text with various databases. The database can include billions of web pages as well as archived internet information. So, when you submit your paper, Turnitin checks for the copied content and citation mistakes.
Even if you have asked a writing service provider that “Please do my assignment,” don’t forget to ask it to provide you Turnitin report because it will be a proof that it has delivered you an authentic document.
It has often been noticed that most of the scholars and even a few professors think that they know everything about Turnitin report. Well, there are a few misconceptions about it that must be clear to everyone. Here are they:
Misconceptions About Turnitin Report
Misconception 1: Turnitin Evaluates the Papers
Truth: Turnitin only matches the text with its database and with other online and offline databases. It doesn’t evaluate the paper or grade it. It is completely up to the professor how much-copied content is fair for him.
Misconception 2: Turnitin Compares the Paper Against Everything Written
Truth: There are some definite sources that are surely not in the database of the Turnitin, especially that ones which are only available in hard copies. However, the sources that students mostly prefer to are available in the database of the Turnitin.
Misconception 3: Once a paper submitted to Turnitin, it goes in its database forever
Truth: Turnitin gives an opportunity to the students to “opt out” of its database as well as provide the institutions an option to have an institutional database for the students' paper. Those papers can be removed by the request of the professor.
Misconception 4: Turnitin detects plagiarism
Truth: Turnitin doesn’t detect plagiarism, rather it just checks the text of the document against its database. It is completely up to the professors that to how much extent they consider the document plagiarized. It can be 0% or up to 15%. It is totally upon university guidelines or professor instructions.
Misconception 5: Turnitin is not flexible
Truth: Turnitin has many options available that make it flexible. It allows students to change their copied content, and submit it again to get a revised report.
Misconception 6: Papers in the Turnitin database are easily accessible
Truth: It is completely wrong. All the papers are safe from prying pair of eyes. No can get access to go to the students’ database.
Misconception 7: The source mention in the report is the same source referred
Truth: Since there are an enormous number of duplicate content on the web, there are chances that Turnitin report shows the name of some other source, and students have taken the references from any other source. So, the source name mentioned in the report might not be the same that the writer has used.
Misconception 8: The similarity score shows the percentage of plagiarized content
Truth: The similarity score just shows the percentage of sentences that you have used from someones’ other document without acknowledging them. So, the text that is quoted just shows the similarity report.
Misconception 9: The professor can determine if a paper is acceptable purely from the similarity score
Truth: The score is not only generated to judge the paper, rather professor should look for the overall report. There are chances that score is high because too many quotes have been used in the document.
Misconception 10: Students can easily fool Turnitin
Truth: Well, students should not even think about it because first of all Turnitin doesn’t only check the document from its vast database which can easily catch the traces of copied content, but also they have to wait for 24 hours to resubmit their paper after making the corrections. Only after that he/she will receive another report. It means they can’t do wordsmithing and resubmitting repeatedly.
Misconception 11: Turnitin doesn’t provide instructions
Truth: Students who haven’t visited the page of Turnitin have a complaint or misconceptions like this. Instructions on how to submit a paper are available on the website.
“Little knowledge is dangerous.” So, it’s better to clear your doubts regarding anything rather than having illusions and misconceptions regarding it. Hope by reading this write-up, your every doubt regarding Turnitin report is clear now.