INTERPRETING TURNITIN REPORT: MEANING OF TURNITIN COLOUR CODES

INTERPRETING TURNITIN REPORT: MEANING OF TURNITIN COLOUR CODES

Turnitin is a tool that acts as a plagiarism detector used to assess the work of students so they can learn about proper citation and reference practices. In this article, we will explain what Turnitin colour codes are and how to understand matches that have been highlighted on a student’s Turnitin submitted assignment, but before that.

Let’s briefly highlight a few purposes of a Turnitin report, which are;

• To detect plagiarism and stop it.
• To spot potential instances of plagiarism and aid in academic writing improvement.
• To offer a report that can be used to spot plagiarism
• Verify that internet sources have been correctly cited in an assignment and that the text has not just been copied without the required referencing.
• As a formative learning tool and to assist students with reference.
• Recognise any cooperation between students from their course and maybe from other universities that use Turnitin.
• To make sure there is a level of equality and parity when comparing the similarities of students’ work to the enormous array of potential web sources.
• To encourage good academic practices and discourage plagiarism among students.

It is ideal to use the Turnitin report in conjunction with other tools for preventing and identifying plagiarism, as well as a component of a coordinated strategy for preserving the academic integrity of students’ written work.

A Turnitin report consists of colour codes and a Turnitin column. In the assignment a student submits for assessment, the student’s name is displayed along with an overall percentage score using colour codes, which displays the overall matching text as a percentage of the assignment.

This quick reference guide shouldn’t be completely reliable as a score of even 1% could possibly contain plagiarism, and there isn’t a perfect ratio to aim for, as it is inevitable for a student’s work to contain some words from other sources.

The proportion will change depending on the kind of assignment, how long it is, and what needs to be done. It is necessary to access the student’s paper and look at the match overview and breakdown panel to investigate specific matches.

Below are the meanings and interpretations of the Turnitin colour codes;

• Blue means no text matches: when a text does not match, it is shown in blue. This could imply that the text uses few or no direct quotations, which may or may not be a problem, as it depends on the nature of the assignment. Hence, it is still important to examine a blue score in case the student merely sent in a paper with text that Turnitin cannot read.
• Green means that one word matches 24% of the text

The most frequent match colour is green, which denotes matches between 1% and 24%. Even though a green score might signal that the document is fine, it just represents the percentage of text that matches, so up to 24% of the page may still have been copied without proper citation.

• Yellow matches 25% to 49% of the text

Percentage matches in bands above 24% are shown by the colours yellow, amber, and red.

• Orange matches 50% – 74% while red matches 75% – 100%, meaning that there is an excessive reliance on the direct quotation as a result of subpar academic writing, or the work was directly copied and pasted from other sources.

Suppose the assignment matches exactly, it might not mean the student did poor writing, most likely. In that case, it has already been turned into Turnitin, that’s if a student is resubmitting their work and the file has already been uploaded to the Turnitin database, or it can be a mistake on the part of the student who failed to cross-check his or her work.

Still, a red Turnitin colour code may also be a sign of conspiracy or the use of someone else’s essay, whether it came from a student in the same class, a year earlier, or from a different university. There are some specific types of words that Turnitin will detect, which can be safely excluded or disregarded.

These words, if used, will be noted as matches on a student’s paper and count toward the Turnitin report’s total Turnitin score; some of these words are;

• Quotations: Citations that are properly cited can be disregarded. The filter can be used to eliminate them.
• References & Bibliography: These references will be included since they were previously used by other students.
• Similar formats, such as using the same essay title.
• Tables and charts displaying statistics or data that have been shared or duplicated.
• The Appendices, due to the possibility that other students also used the same sources, may contain a substantial amount of matching content.
• Small matches in subject terminology or common phrases in a sentence will be picked up; the small match filter can be used to eliminate these.
• Some words you have paraphrased, even when specific words in the phrase have been modified, paraphrasing text from a source will be marked. If the source has been cited, the tutor will use his or her academic judgment to determine whether the material has been appropriately paraphrased.

However, there are some sources or words that Turnitin reports do not find a match for, for example, printed books and journals, works that have been translated from another language, password-protected online content, or photographs, drawings, schematics, or blueprints.

Furthermore, Turnitin reports should make clear that they do not identify words as plagiarised; rather, they just display the quantity of matched text that Turnitin has discovered by highlighting the matched text on a student’s work and citing the sources for the matched text, which includes cited and quoted text.

When students submit their work, Turnitin will compare it to a variety of sources, including Internet documents, Internet data, a repository for previously turned-in assignments, a journal registry, and published works. Turnitin will then produce:

• A “Similarity index,” which denotes how closely the submitted work matches other sources.
• An “Originality report,” which details all of these matches in depth and lists the sources used to make the match.

The submitted work’s Index and Report are available for students and professors to view; additionally, Turnitin keeps submitted work in its database for future cross-referencing.

Conclusion 

It is important to note that the report contains matches like, not cited or quoted, missing quotation, missing citation, cited and quoted. All these show how similar a work can be to another existing work already done.

It is advisable to stick to originality because even the lowest percentage score is considered plagiarism.