An originality report is a final score when you send in your assignment, based on comparing the text to sources online to check their similarity. The final score tells you what percentage of the document is the same as online sources. The lower the better, but there is no one perfect Turnitin score. It is an indicator, though a good rule of thumb is to try to get it below 20%. Any higher and there is a single chance you might be put up for plagiarism. Your Similarity Report will show you the breakdown of your percentage. You may have a high similarity score, but it may be made up of small percentages from many sources, which is just good academic writing. Similarly, you may have a relatively low score, but if this is made up of just one or two sources there could be a problem. It is more important to examine the Similarity Report than just the overall score.
The originality report on Turnitin is just an indicator rather than a foolproof detector. When you get your report, check to see what parts are being detected. It should be ok if it is mainly the sources you used in a bibliography or bits and pieces such as common phrases. The main issue your lecturers are looking for is a large amount of text or quotes without quotations. So when you get your score, make sure you look over what is being highlighted.
This depends a lot on your lecturers settings, in some instances they may have set it up to not give a report, only give a report after a few hours or a similar setting so wait and see if its is generated later. If there is an issue, email your lecturers to ask about it in case an issue has arisen. Also if you resubmit an assignment it can take up to 24 hours to create a new report.
Again this depends on your lecturer's settings, but in general, you should be able to submit multiple assignments, with the last submission being the only one your lecturer should see. Also, many lecturers provide draft submissions to check for plagiarism and the like.
How do I interpret the similarity report?
Turnitin checks your submissions against their database. If it finds instances where your writing is similar to or matches against one of our sources, it will flag this for your instructor to review.
A similarity percentage in your report notes exactly how much text is similar to others in the database. A greyed-out icon in the Similarity column represents Similarity Reports that have not yet finished generating. Wait a bit and return to it; it should be there.
The colour associated with the report indicates the similarity score of the paper ranging from 0-100%. The possible similarity ranges are:
Though again, all these tools are just indicators of similarity rather than definitive.
Can I delete my submission?
Again this depends on your lecturer's settings, but in general, you should be able to submit multiple assignments, with the last submission being the only one your lecturer should see. Also, many lecturers provide draft submissions to check for plagiarism.
I uploaded my essay, but I didn't get an originality report. Why is this?
This can be for a few reasons. Your lecturer may have said that the originality report is not immediately available or will be released 24 hours later. Also, resubmitting an assignment can take at least 24 hours to get a new report. So leave it and return later, and it should show up then.
How do I exclude quotes and bibliography from my Similarity Report score?
Video taken from Turnitin youtube channel: https://youtu.be/4m-Wr2ebHPU