Turnitin Access To Plagiarism Check For GMS Students

• Having personal Turnitin access through Blackboard Learn allows you to confidentially check your written work for potential plagiarism.  With a close inspection of the results Turnitin may also help with incorrect quotation and missing citations.  Turnitin for GMS graduate students:
  • Students are provided access to this Turnitin site when matriculating to GMS.  Students should search their Blackboard site for “plagiarism” and see if they have access.  If not, then follow this link to request access: Plagiarism-Check Blackboard site
    • You will be asked to give your name, email BUID and the submission type (i.e. Dissertation, Thesis or Paper) and your GMS program affiliation.
    • After verifying you are not a robot, you be should sent to a new page and get a notification saying “We have received your request to be added to the plagiarism check Blackboard Learn site.”
      It will take some time for your request to be approved (at least 10 min, possibly 24 hr).
      The next time you log in to Blackboard, under ‘My Courses’ in the right-hand column you should see the entry:  “GMS Plagiarism Check”.
  • To submit a document, click on “Turnitin Submission” on the left-hand panel of the Blackboard site
    • Then click on “>> View/Complete”  (The first time you use Turnitin it will ask you to agree the user agreement).
      If you have never submitted a document before there should be a submit button.  If you have submitted before you will need to click the resubmit button to submit your new or revised document.  You may get a warning that resubmitting will replace your earlier submission.  It also reminds you that you can only upload 3 documents in 24 hours.
    • You can browse to find the document on your computer then click ‘upload’
    • You will get a message saying it may take up to 2-min to load
    • Once the document is loaded be sure to click on ‘confirm’
    • You should get a congratulatory message.  (You will also get an email confirming the successful submission.)
    • Click on the link to return to submission list
    • You will likely see that your document ‘similarity’ index is ‘processing.’  The algorithm may take a few hours to run.  You will need check back and see when it has finished.
    • When Turnitin has completed its work, the status will be changed, and on the “View/Complete” page and will get a similarity index.  Click on the number to view the similarity.  The lower this index, the better.
      • Press “view” on the far right to see the submitted manuscript with Turnitin’s Feedback Studio which has some interesting automation features.
      • Alternatively, you can download the results with the arrow icon on the far right of the display
  • NOTE:  Students cannot submit more than 3 documents in a 24hour period.  Please plan accordingly or use an alternatively resource like Turnitin Draft Coach alternative via Google Doc

• It is recommended that you remove the bibliography/references prior to submission to Turnitin.
• Because Turnitin cannot scan Images and Figures these can also be removed prior to the check. You must manually check images and figures for plagiarism and potential copyright violations.
• It is acceptable to include your published (or soon to be submitted for publication) manuscript as a chapter in your thesis or dissertation. If you choose to include your published manuscript, you should include a disclaimer at the beginning of the chapter. Ex: “Disclaimer: Data and portions of the text in this chapter were originally published as: Costanza, G. and Benes, E. (2018) Uromycitisis, a follow up report. J. Urinary Maladies.”
  • Published manuscripts should be removed from your thesis or dissertation prior to submission to Turnitin, assuming that they have already been analyzed by Turnitin. If they have not been, they should be included. Unpublished manuscripts should be included in your submission to Turnitin. • How to interpret a “Turnitin Originality Report”

Problems:
If you are having difficulty submitted a second or third trial of a paper/thesis, please wait a couple hours before trying again.  Clear your cache and try a different browser.  Often that will solve the problem.  Students should be able to upload a draft 3 times in 24 hours, but sometimes you need to do need to clear your cache or change browsers to be successful

• Having problems with Turnitin, especially due to previous publications raising your similarity index,  please reach out tdavies@bu.edu for assistance

• Turnitin returns:
  •  Similarity index, Similarity by Source, Internet Sources, Publications, & Student Papers
  • Generally, the similarity index should be less than 20%.
  • A low similarity index does not necessarily mean that there are not any passages in the document that need correcting. It is important to look at every identified similarity and determine why it has been flagged.
    • A common definition may be acceptable.
    • Did it identify methods or protocols from your lab? These will need to be rewritten.
    • Did it identify matches to publications or text from the internet—again these sentences, paragraphs,  sections will need to be rewritten
    • If you have any questions interpreting the Turnitin report please reach out to your faculty mentors.
    • Once you have made edits it is important to resubmit the document for a final check.
    • The final Turnitin report should be submitted to your mentor and first reader for approval.