OU and plagiarism score on turnitin

[Soconfusedandbroken]

Wondering what is an acceptable score on turnitin for the OU?

Also, is it ok to check your assignment twice?

It all depends.

If you have an exam paper or case study, you're going to have a high level of similarity as all students will be handing in the same 'template'. I have referred students to Academic Conduct for a 7% match previously as that paragraph might have been copied from an old submission. In some cases, similarities of 35% may be ok if it's really dense with good references. You might get a paper with 25% similarity, but all of that might be copied and pasted from the internet, meaning that the student needs to learn how to paraphrase.

Context is always key.

thanks so much for your quick reply.

If I was to put it through turnitin again, wouldn’t it show a 100% similarity score?

is It ok to put it through twice?

id written an assignment and got back a score of 18%. I’d not copied anything but obviously there were key words etc that couldn’t be left out.
ive tried changing as much as possible and referencing more. I just wondered if I could check again to see if it’s been useful in reducing the score

Why are you worried about 18%? You want some level of similarity as it shows you have drawn from sources - this isn't avoidable. In my last Russel Group Uni, anything over 35% needed more scrutiny.

18% wouldn't be on my radar, unless the highlighted text revealed an 18% copied / pasted section. I wouldn't worry.

Oh that’s unbelievably reassuring. Thank you so much. I can breathe again!

As long as you're referencing within the University guidelines then it will be fine. Think of all the other students / publications using the same references....they will match to yours too.

My son submitted an assignment today and it had a 56% similarity score - slight panic until we realised it was music analysis, therefore the lyrics of his song sheets were marching with the lead sheets available online. That can't be helped at all! Context is key

Good luck!!!

Retired professor here. It really matters that you're acknowledging that you're using items from another work that you're giving the original author credit. Sometimes it's impossible to paraphrase important concepts.

Each assignment will be checked by someone who will look at the Turnitin score and also at all the passages Turnitin flags up and see if they are actually plagiarised.

Turnitin is a nightmare for false positives and the score is irrelevant. I’ve looked at student assignments with a 30% match score which are completely fine but Turnitin is flagging bibliography or quotations as plagiarism when it is not , and also have found genuine plagiarism in assignments with a very low match score.

so don’t worry about the Turnitin score, just make sure that you are in fact referencing correctly and acknowledging your sources and you will be fine

And is it ok if I put it through turnitin twice? I don’t want to be disqualified or in trouble for doing so

Yeah you can put it through turn it in again. That's not a problem