Turnitin

How to view the Overall Similarity Index

Additional Information

• Turnitin does not determine plagiarism. The Overall Similarity Index is a measure of the percentage of the paper that the system was able to find matching text for, regardless of whether or not the text was properly cited. The determination and ajudication of proper citation and plagiarism are left solely up to the instructor.
• The OSI is an overall percentage. It is not simply the sum of the percentages within the cumulative view of the Originality Report. The cumulative view of the report shows the largest blocks of matched text and notes the percentage of the paper that those blocks cover. Within those blocks of text may be individual words that are not matched to the source. Other matching sources may match the individual words that do not match the source shown while not matching as large a section of text. For instance in the sentence:"The brown dog jumped over the log then ran around until he found a frog." The source displayed in the cumulative report may have matched all but the words "over," "brown" and "around" (i.e. "The dog jumped the log then ran until he found a frog"). Another source may match the missed words but not be as long of a match as the displayed source (i.e. "The brown dog jumped over the log then ran around.") For the cumulative view the only source displayed would be the 80% match of the first source. However, as all of the missing words are matched in an additional source, the OSI for the paper is 100%.