LibAnswers: Student Digital Skills and Assistive Technology

Turnitin is a text matching software and compares submitted written assignments (your written submission) with content in their search database, these databases include other student submitted assignments, past and present (DMU and other universities). It also searches on internet pages and some publications.  The number of matches within your work and the amount of text within these matches is used to generate a ‘similarity score’. The more matched material that appears, the higher this score will be. If these other sources have used the same references, citations and direct quotes these can show up as a matches and reflect in the score (even if you have not used these). If you have submitted similar written work before in Turnitin this will be picked up too.

There is the option to 'filter' matches to references and bibliography when viewing your Turnitin report.

This filter option allows you to filter out matches to references and quotes which refreshes the similarity report and produces an updated similarity score.

How to filter references and quotes in your Turnitin report:

1. Open your Turnitin similarity report - which you can access using the same Turnitin link in your Blackboard module that you used to submit your assignment in Turnitin. Select the similarity score, this will open your similarity report.
2. Select the 'Filter and Settings icon (funnel shaped) , this will open the 'Filters and Settings' options. Select the filters you wish to exclude from your report e.g. 'Exclude quotes' and or 'Exclude Bibliography' (references) See image illustration below.
3. Select the 'Apply Changes' - your report will be refreshed.

Note - some lecturers when they set up the Turnitin link set the link to exclude any matches to quotes or bibliography, though some don't set this. Also note that you can toggle these filters off/on if needed.

Note - matches found do not automatically imply plagiarism, look and see what the text matches are and filter out common matches to references and quotes.