Plagiarism scan results

[Jennr2z]

Hello.  Question…. I always run my papers through a plagiarism scanner, usually on two websites before I turn in. Even though I know that I wrote my papers it still makes me nervous. My question is what percentage is acceptable? For example I just ran a paper through Chegg plagiarism scanner and it says 10% of your paper matches public sources. I understand that is generally quotes from authors, etc that I have cited, but just curious on this?

[Alpha]

If there's a specific numerical answer to this question then I'm sure I don't know it.  On the other hand, I'll bet the percentage could get pretty high, as long as the quotations are properly cited.

[bjcheung77]

I remember a few years back, using TurnItIn, almost all of my submissions comes back with a percentage that is noted, the reason is because I have a "header" that has my personal details and it's the same header I use for all submissions. I didn't get flagged for that, but I did get flagged for a "common/simple" sentence that was the exact same thing as one of the cited works. I don't recall what the sentence was but after I made a slight change, that was history...

[rachel83az]

I wouldn't worry too much about only 10%, so long as it's properly cited stuff. Some of it probably isn't, though. And that can be okay. For the ASU 1-credit class, one of the assignments was writing instructions for making a sandwich. Mine got flagged as not being 100% original because of the phrase "peanut butter and jelly sandwich". Because of how short the assignment was and how many times it was necessary to mention the sandwich, I think it was flagged as being 10-15% unoriginal. I had a bit of a laugh about that.

[allvia]

I recently had to turn in an essay question assignment (everything written goes through TurnItIn at Amberton) and was shocked to see a 21% return! Then I realized that it is because the assignment required the professors questions to be included - if I removed the questions that every other student also included (word for word) my return % was a single digit number. My point being, the % allowed will vary depending on the assignment, its length  and how well you cite your source(s) - however, the general rule of thumb is the lower the better.

[ss20ts]

The acceptable percentage varies by school and professor. Some things that I see in TurnItIn every time I submit a paper is the professor's name, my name, my email, the course name, the date, and the assignment name almost always are flagged as plagiarism. I've had my entire reference page come up as plagiarism. I always find it hilarious to see references get flagged.

[studyingfortests]

At TESU, in doing my Capstone, I once got a 30 or 40% plagiarism score, but it was because of previously submitted assignments that (per policy for the class) were assembled and re-submitted as part of the final project. Even without that I often got 10 or 15%, but it was for stupid things like the cover page text (school name, instructor, course, etc) matching. I don't remember what TESU used, but it wasn't Turnitin.

My grad school uses Turnitin, and it's a joke. Every paper comes back with a score of 5, 10, 20%, and it's the same sort of stuff as others have described... professor questions have to be included, etc. But more ridiculously, sometimes it marks individual words, or two or three words in a sentence. I'm not talking about direct quotes from articles, just words in the text.

One would think that after all these years, these companies, whose entire business model is based on using stolen content (student submitted papers used with coercive "permission") would have figured out a way to not mark as plagiarism, the sequential use of three words in a row. But it is what it is.

I wonder how often students past the first year of college are dumb enough to submit work that is truly plagiarized?

[Vle045]

Heck, a few of mine returned with like 50% or more. But I know darn well that I didn’t plagiarize a darn thing. It was mostly because there’s only so many ways to report about a certain topic. And the template included a schoolwide footer that is on every single page of every paper. It wasn’t a problem.

[ss20ts]

My grad school uses Turnitin, and it's a joke.  Every paper comes back with a score of 5, 10, 20%, and it's the same sort of stuff as others have described... professor questions have to be included, etc.  But more ridiculously, sometimes it marks individual words, or two or three words in a sentence. I'm not talking about direct quotes from articles, just words in the text.

I love when a single word is highlighted in TurnItIn. Yup, the word the is the most commonly one highlighted. THE. Seriously? How is that plagiarizing anything?

[origamishuttle]

I love when a single word is highlighted in TurnItIn. Yup, the word the is the most commonly one highlighted. THE. Seriously? How is that plagiarizing anything?

I knew someone was ripping off my THE's. Now I know who...