Turnitin

Turnitin is a text-matching service that compares a submitted document against a database of published work, web content and previously submitted student papers, returning a similarity report with matched passages highlighted and colour-coded by source.

The similarity percentage is not a plagiarism score, and this is the most common misunderstanding among research students. Correctly quoted and cited material still registers as a match, as do reference lists, standard methodological phrases and common technical terminology. A high percentage made up of properly attributed sources is not misconduct.

What matters is the pattern behind the number. Read the report source by source: a single long unattributed passage is a serious problem, while many short scattered matches to citations and standard phrasing usually are not. Universities set their own thresholds, and filters can exclude quotations and bibliography. Use it as a drafting check, and reduce genuine similarity by paraphrasing properly and citing carefully rather than by swapping synonyms.