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How Turnitin works

The Times Higher Education Supplement August 17, 2007 How Turnitin works David C.

Sanders LETTER; Pg.

15 No.

1807 171 words While being entertained by your neo-oxymoronic "self-plagiarising" ("Self plagiarising lecturer exposes software failings", July 27), I was disappointed to see your description of Turnitin as "plagiarism-detection software".

What Turnitin does is to identify material that is unoriginal - whether the lack of originality so detected is a case of plagiarism remains a matter of academic judgment.

For instance, I was recently asked to give my opinion of a piece of work for which Turnitin had identified 124 published sources.

Of those, 122 sources each contributed less than 1 per cent of the unoriginal work submitted, and some of those were the references.

I have also seen material where the whole of work submitted by a student was identical to a single published source.

Turnitin is a helpful aid not only in deterring plagiarism but also in identifying poor writing and reference skills.

Understanding what the software does is essential in making that judgment.

David C.

Sanders Associate dean, psychology Sunderland University August 18, 2007 ENGLISH Magazine Copyright 2007 TSL Education Limited All Rights Reserved