LibAnswers: Library and Learning Services

Turnitin helps the university screen student work for plagiarism; it checks the originality of a document by comparing it to a vast database of academic and online sources, including assignments submitted by students at other universities. 

There is no fixed number or threshold for an acceptable Turnitin score. The similarity score has to be interpreted to see what is highlighted as similar. If a chunk of text is highlighted as similar, this could be a problem even if the similarity percentage is low. If the references are highlighted as similar, this is unlikely to be a problem, as all students doing a similar course are likely to be referencing the same sources.

To help you interpret your similarity score, we recommend visiting and reviewing the following guides: 

• Our guide on Plagiarism and Turnitin
• Turnitin's guidance on how to understand your Similarity Report