Turnitin Similarity is a plagiarism detection tool. It generates reports after checking students’ assignment submissions against institutional and online databases. If there are instances where a student's writing is similar to, or matches against, any of the sources, Turnitin will highlight it for instructors or TAs to review. Turnitin also flags anomalies such as hidden text and replaced characters.

The Similarity Score itself should not solely be used to determine the academic integrity of a student’s paper. Instead, consider the use of quotations, citations and bibliographic material when reviewing the score. For more information, please visit Interpreting the Similarity Score.

On April 4, 2023, Turnitin added a new AI writing detection tool. If there is a probability that any portion of the document was written by AI, a percentage score will be displayed on the Similarity Report. Clicking the percentage will open a pop-up window with some information about how the score was calculated.

Turnitin's AI disclaimer: The AI writing assessment may not always be accurate (it may misidentify both human and AI-generated text) so it should not be used as the sole basis for adverse actions against a student.

If you suspect academic dishonesty, please refer to UNM Policy in the Faculty Handbook and Pathfinder for the appropriate course of action.

The video below is a training session from 3/8/2023 if you are interested in watching it.

Note: Legacy submissions from SafeAssign, Blackboard’s plagiarism detection tool (in use at UNM August 2015 – May 2022), were imported into the UNM Turnitin institutional database.