Scan settings within Turnitin can be modified for each assignment. By adjusting the settings based on your particular courses and instructional needs, you can reduce the noise in your reports, that is, you can reduce false alarms and inflated match scores, making your reports more accurate and grading more efficient.
Instructors need to note that these scan settings carry over for each assignment every term during our normal copy procedures. After your course content is copied over into your upcoming Canvas shell, we always recommend double-checking the scan settings for each assignment.
This article will go over how to access and modify Turnitin scan settings. The article also discusses the various scan settings and how they contribute to the accuracy of AI and plagiarism reports.
Table of Contents
How to Activate Turnitin and Modify Settings
How to Modify Additional Settings in the Similarity Report
How to Activate Turnitin and Modify Settings
- For detailed instructions on how to create a new assignment with Turnitin enabled, please reference our help article Turnitin: How to Create an Assignment with AI and Plagiarism Check and View the Results (Instructor).
- To enable Turnitin on an existing assignment:
- Open any assignment and click the Edit button in the upper right corner of the assignment page.
- Then scroll down to the Plagiarism Review area of the settings.
- Select Turnitin DES from the dropdown menu.
- For both newly created assignments and existing assignments, an expanded menu will appear allowing you to customize the Turnitin settings. The below settings are the Extended Studies default settings for Turnitin.
- You can modify the scan settings for the Turnitin-enabled assignment. The settings available on the assignment level within Canvas are as follows:
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Exclude bibliographic materials: Exclude text appearing in the bibliography, works cited, or references sections of student papers from being checked for matches when generating Similarity Reports. You can override this setting in individual Similarity Reports.
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Exclude quoted materials: Exclude text appearing in the quotes from being checked for matches when generating Similarity Reports. You can override this setting in individual Similarity Reports.
- Submission Indexing: When a submission is indexed by Turnitin, it is made available for comparison in future Similarity Reports. On assignment creation, you can decide if papers submitted to your course will be indexed in this way or if you would just like them to receive a similarity report. Use the check box to either choose to index all submissions or not. An unticked check box will still return a Similarity Report but the papers submitted to the course will not match against any future submissions.
- Setting Similarity Report Availability: You can opt to make the Similarity Report available to students at different points during the submission and grading process. Choose one of the following options to ensure your students can see their report at a time that matches your instructional goals.
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Immediately: The Similarity Report will be made available to students as soon as they make their submission to Canvas. This is ideal if you want students to review the report and make changes before making a final submission.
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After the assignment is graded: The Similarity Report will be made available to students as soon as their assignment has been graded in Canvas. This option is best suited to final drafts, especially if you have worked with students on previous drafts and worked with them on proper paraphrasing and source citation.
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After the due date: The Similarity Report will be made available to students as soon as the assignment due date passes.
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Never: The Similarity Report will never be made available to students but will be available to instructors after submission. Due to the reduced transparency with this setting, choose never only if the assignment is low-stakes or you are not too concerned with potential plagiarism or AI use. Be warned that students will likely request their reports if you are scanning their submissions, so if you choose this option, you can expect an uptick in messages from your students.
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How to Modify Additional Settings in the Similarity Report
After a Similarity Report has been generated, as an instructor, you have the option to modify additional settings for each assignment on the submission level. Important Note: You will need to repeat this process for each student submission you review.
- First, you will need to view the Turnitin results for a specific assignment. Please reference the following article which outlines the steps on how to do this: Turnitin: How to Create an Assignment with AI and Plagiarism Check and View the Results (Instructor).
- Once you are viewing the Similarity Report for an individual assignment. Click on the "Filters" button, which allows you to access additional settings.
- The additional settings menu has two categories Compare submissions against and Exclusion filters. These options allow you to modify the Similarity Report based on specific criteria. By utilizing these options during the review process, you may potentially filter information that does or does not qualify as plagiarism. If you choose to update any of the default settings you must click on the "Apply Filters" button once complete.
- Compare submissions against: You can exclude entire repositories from appearing in a Similarity Report.
- Submitted Works: This is an umbrella term for all items previously submitted to any of the repositories that an account has been set up with.
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Internet content: Turnitin's 'web crawler' actively archives websites and holds over 70 billion current and removed pages in its database.
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Publications: Turnitin partners with leading content publishers to create a robust collection of over 170 million articles from library databases, textbook publishers, digital reference collections, subscription-based publications, homework helper sites, and books.
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Crossref & Crossref Posted Content: The Crossref repository is a collection of published scholarly works and the Crossref Posted Content collection of scholarly works that have been submitted but not yet published. Both are available to search submissions against through their exclusive partnership with Crossref.
- Exclusion filters: Content exclusions can include removing any matches to the bibliography or any places within a document where the author has used quotes.
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Exclude Bibliography: For papers written in English, Turnitin's machine learning algorithm can understand what elements of the paper should be excluded and dynamically remove them from the Similarity Report without the need for the uploader to specify a specific bibliography section of their paper. For papers written in a non-English language, Turnitin looks for a beginning and terminating phrase to work out where the bibliography is.
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Exclude quoted text: Turnitin looks for all content between quotation marks and excludes this text from the report.
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Exclude cited text: Turnitin uses machine learning to check every line in a document. If the tool finds something it identifies as an in-line citation, it won't be included in the Similarity Report. The quoted part of the citation can be removed using Exclude Quotes.
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Exclude small matches: Turnitin will filter all matches that are less than or equal to the length of the number of words supplied.
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- Compare submissions against: You can exclude entire repositories from appearing in a Similarity Report.
For more information on exclusions and filters please reference the following help article: Managing exclusions and filters in the new, enhanced Similarity Report.
For questions related to Turnitin Scan Settings and Optimization, please reach out to Instructor Excellence at ext-instructorexcellence@ucsd.edu.
For more information on Turnitin, please visit our Turnitin Resources Central Hub the Turnitin Guides website.