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Turnitin is most effective when used in conjunction with education and instruction around concepts of plagiarism, author voice, source documentation, citation, etc.
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While Turnitin is often called a "plagiarism detection tool," the software does not actually determine if an assignment has been plagiarized. Rather, it generates a Similarity Report to help an instructor find sources that contain text similar to submitted papers. The decision to deem any work plagiarized must be made carefully.
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Any "matches" Turnitin detects need to be considered within the context of the submitted assignment. For example, Turnitin flags content that is properly quoted and cited as unoriginal, since the student did not write the original words.
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Turnitin does NOT detect all possible copied passages, nor can it detect violations of academic integrity. For example, Turnitin cannot determine if a student paid another person to write his or her paper.
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When students submit their works to Turnitin, they retain their copyrights. For further details see, Turnitin Privacy, Security and Copyright Protection