1       How Turnitin works 

1.1      A Turnitin assignment is set up by a member of staff on QMplus. You then access this assignment online and upload your work before the due date. Turnitin will analyse the submitted work to identify text matches with other sources and will compare the work against:

• the current and archived web;
• previously submitted work;
• books and journals.

1.2      For each piece of submitted work Turnitin provides two things:

• A similarity index, which indicates the percentage of the submitted paper that Turnitin has identified as matching other sources.
• An originality report, which shows each of these matches in more detail, including the source(s) that Turnitin has found.

2       How Turnitin is used within the school

2.1      Turnitin is used on all undergraduate and post-graduate assignments that contribute towards your final grade. Turnitin will not normally be used on the following assignments:

• contributions to online discussions
  
• exercises submitted on paper
• exams

2.2       For those assignments where Turnitin is used, all submissions to that assignment will be submitted to Turnitin. 

2.3      How we use the information provided by Turnitin

2.3.1      Only academic staff will make a judgement on whether plagiarism has occurred in a piece of work. An academic may interpret the originality report to help but Turnitin itself does not make this judgement

2.3.2      Turnitin will highlight matching text such as references, quotations, common phrases and data tables within work that has no plagiarism issues at all. Those interpreting Turnitin reports will discount such matches and so initial percentages are often irrelevant.

2.3.3      Where it is suspected that plagiarism has occurred in a piece of work, the originality report may be submitted to the Head of School and possibly to an Assessment Offences Panel for further investigation.

2.4      Other things you should know

2.4.1      Turnitin stores a copy of most work submitted to it in its repository. This does not affect the ownership of or any copyright in the original work.

2.4.2      Staff may configure a Turnitin assignment such that copies of submissions are not stored in its database. This will be done for all test-runs or any ‘dummy’ assignments used for training or demonstration purposes.

2.4.3      Staff on your course will ensure that no commercially or otherwise sensitive documents are stored in Turnitin’s repository.

You cannot opt out of having your work scanned by Turnitin, but if you believe that your work should be deleted after it is scanned you should contact your lecturer.