The TURNITIN software is not intended to be used as a punitive tool. Rather, it shall be used as a learning tool for detecting and preventing unlawful copying in academic writing by comparing academic or other written materials/papers against a vast number of databases of published and unpublished materials; the software searches for textual similarities in submitted papers.

The result is a colour-coded similarity index report, which shows how similar the text in that work is to other writings online.

TURNITIN similarity index report looks for matches in other text sources with bits of the scanned text that are stored in the software’s repository.

These matching texts are frequently expressed in a percentage form, which represents the grand total and is solely meant to serve as a guide for the instructor.

TURNITIN will never indicate if a sufficient level of text matching has been achieved or whether a plagiarism incident has occurred. In any instance, the institution’s own norms and criteria are the sole determinants of whether or not plagiarism has occurred. As a result, the similarity index report generated should not be utilized as the only foundation for action.

Before a work is declared plagiarized or scientific misconduct is reported, a thorough evaluation of the supplied material and the alleged plagiarized material is required.