Advice on appeals.

[bottleofbeer]

Hi, I'm just finishing level 5 and have recently had a piece of work back with a bad grade. The reason for this is "extensive plagiarism". My turnitin score was 25% but 20% was made up of student papers submitted to universities all over the world. We do not see our similarity score on submission (I'm doing joint hons - the other subject does allow this to give us the opportunity to make changes to unintentional matches and resubmit).

I'm absolutely certain I've not plagiarised. Every claim, every quote, everything I've paraphrased is cited and referenced, extensively. I've used 30 references more than is required as a minimum. This "extensive plagiarism" has, I quote "hugely impacted on my grade".

Even where text is highlighted, it's coming from various different sources, and this is apparently where I've copied ad verbatim.

I've appealed the grade, I'm happy to be taken to the academic misconduct panel as two friends who work in higher education and mark uni work for a living found it laughable and told me this person clearly doesn't understand that turnitin is a similarity checker which needs to be looked at in context.

It's a very niche topic with very little information, so I think that matches are to be expected. Two others have been accused, she's had one girl in tears over how horribly she writes (this young girl has been an easy first class student for the last two years and if anything is often commended on her writing skills).

My question is this, would you consider a piece of work with a 25% similarity match (the highest being 2%) and the rest made up of 1 and

If I had why are all the comments throughout the assignment saying "excellent!" "Brilliant!"?

Over referencing is not something she mentioned and it's a very lengthy feedback report. Two other professionals who have seen it all, including the turnitin report categorically stated it's not plagiarised at all.

IME the Turnitin similarity score can be a bit of a joke, some of the things it flags are beyond ridiculous. When I used it there were scores between 7-33% and there were never any issues with lecturers - the one that flagged 33% had flagged a load of ‘ands’ and equation references. It sounds like it’s an issue with the module lead but deciding what to do about it is tough.

When my DH was at uni he had an essay failed for no clear reason - it was written clearly and concisely with good references and received generally positive comments and just a few suggestions for other things he could cover yet it’d been marked at 36%. A meeting with the lecturer didn’t give any further hints as to why they’d failed it. He ended up not contesting it to avoid any backlash and just resubmitted for the capped mark of 40%.

Yes, my name and student number are flagged. Sentences like "so and so argues that..." are flagged. Citations too. Most of the similarities are

Oh and I've just submitted one at 51%

It's fine because it's a lab report and every single student had to put exactly the same information into the appendix. PI sheet, debriefing sheet and copies of the bi polar scale. Along with a results section that should be exactly the same providing you interpreted the results correctly. 45% of it was submitted to my uni. So my actual similarity is 6%

I KNEW this score was ok but because of this mess I mailed the module leader who laughed and said that if the score wasn't high, I'd done something wrong.

I'd bet in the same situation the other tutor would accuse me of plagiarism.

I think it depends on the structure of plagiarized text. I've just marked student assignments and submitted some to be investigated. Our uni policy is that if it is poor paraphrasing which is clear I.e 1% or less matches even if this adds up to around 20% can be addressed in the marking process with the relevant text ignored. This is listed in our uni policy guidelines. If there is a 3% or more match to an individual piece of work I would definitely submit it. To be fair it's better safe than sorry in terms of being investigated.

I have just marked an assignment with a higher turnitin score than yours witj no penalities because the words highlighted were technical and could not have been altered or paraphrased as it would have changed the assignments meaning.

Please so speak to someone on your academic quality team as they will be able to advise on the next steps. AM can be serious but it just sounds like you have an over zealous lecturer that hasn't been following the correct uni procedures.

It would have been better if this did go to a misconduct panel, so they would be able to better analyse if there is really any plagiarism or just lots of tiny bits that are similar. Less than 1% which was referenced would not raise an eyebrow on our panel, and in some subjects like Law where there is a lot of quotation/citation of cases needed, the % often run really high.

You might have slightly too many quotes in there if it's running at 20% but definitely pursue this in terms of the SU and make a complaint. The tutor should have passed this on to the dept' misconduct officer in our uni, who would have had a second read and made a decision before going forward. I have noticed our administration doing this prior to us marking- they take out any high scores and examine them closely first before we mark them so that if there is an issue, it is picked up by experienced Turnitin users (not the staff lol!)

I think you may have an inexperienced tutor who is not getting any guidance. In the social sciences it is pretty common to see 24% Turnitin scores - not because students are plagiarising but because they have standard front sheets, cite sources in their essays and have a reference list at the end of the essay - all of which counts as copied. Add in the very short phrases that occur naturally but are not unique and the score mounts up pretty quickly. IME very low scores (below 10%) tend to be non-native speakers who are struggling with English and don't write clearly.

If this really were a plagiarised essay it would be really inappropriate of the tutor to deduct marks directly. In most institutions there is a process - as other panels have said - you go to a panel, the tutor states their case, the student - with a rep from the students' union or elsewhere if they wish - states their case, the panel looks at the evidence and decides.

I strongly advise you to appeal this - start with the important part, that you have been accused of plagiarism and you didn't do it. It's a pretty terrible accusation. I think the best thing to happen is for this to go to a panel. By the sound of it they will laugh it out of court, you can then raise the issue of the essay being marked on the basis of plagiarism.