What is Turnitin?
Turnitin® is a tool that students and instructors can use to identify potential instances of plagiarism. When you submit your paper to Turnitin®, you will get a similarity report that should be reviewed carefully so you can make any needed revisions to your paper.
What Does Turnitin Do?
Turnitin® highlights sentences or phrases that are similar to works or papers that have already been published, submitted, or found online. Similarity is not always the same as plagiarism. You might have something similar in your paper to what has been published, such as a direct quote, but this does not always mean that you have plagiarized. If you have put quotation marks around that direct quote, and you’ve cited it, you have not plagiarized. Items on your references list are also going to show up as similar, but because these are citations, these similarities do not equal plagiarism.
If the highlighted area in your similarity report contains information or wording that you have obtained from a source, be sure you have properly summarized, paraphrased, or quoted that material and you have cited the source. If you do not cite outside sources, it is considered plagiarizing.
To see examples and get more details view the following video:
What To Do if You Have a High Score but Have Correctly Paraphrased, Quoted, and Cited
If you have a high Turnitin score, be sure you have cited any ideas that came from a source. You should also be sure that you have included your own academic writing into each of your body paragraphs--information from sources should only be PART of each body paragraph. The Integrating Research guide can help you to lower your Turnitin score.
How Do I Run an Originality Check?
UAGC is moving away from Waypoint for submitting assignments, which will impact the way students use Turnitin before submitting their paper to the instructor. This transition is happening in blocks of courses every month. Use the guidance below based on whether or not your course uses Waypoint for submitting assignments or not. All UAGC courses will have Waypoint removed by Fall 2026.
If your course does not use Waypoint for submitting assignments:
1. Within your Canvas course home page, navigate to the Course Information block and then click on "Turnitin DRAFTS Submissions."
2. On the new page, select "Start Assignment."
3. You will then be able to upload a document. Once uploaded, click the "Submit Assignment" button at the bottom. This submission will not be a graded draft. This is just for you to get a similarity report.
4. The similarity report will generate within minutes (up to 15 minutes). You will find it on the right side of the screen under "Submission." Click "Submission Details."
Next, click the similarity "percentage number" to open the similarity report.
Review the report to understand where you have areas of concern for similarity. To help you improve your Turnitin similarity score, use the Integrating Research guide and the Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing guide.
If your course uses Waypoint for submitting assignments:
1. Click on the WayPoint submission link for the assignment you would like to check--just like you would do if you were turning in the assignment.
2. Upload your assignment by clicking on "Choose File."
3. Change the Submission Type to "Originality Check Only."
4. Click "Upload."
5. Review your submission by clicking on the "Click here to View Report" link.
6. Review your assignment for instances of similarity.