Similarity and other related information

It is important that staff are aware of Brunel's policy on text matching services before analysing similarity in submissions.

Brunel is using Turnitin for similarity detection.

The following links may help with analysing the reports generated by Turnitin.

• Interpreting the similarity score
• Submission indexing
• Excluding an individual source
• Re-including a source
• Excluding text from the Similarity Report
• Excluding content from the Similarity Report
• Bibiliography and quote exclusion definitions
• Excluding search repositories
• Viewing paper match details
• Flags
• Sharing the report
• List of stopwords
• Video tutorials

Note: Remember that a high similarity score does not automatically mean that work has been plagiarised, nor is its findings exhaustive. There may be a number of perfectly legitimate factors contributing to a higher score. Guidelines for staff on handling suspected plagiarism can be found on your College's IntraBrunel site (the staff handbook is often a good starting point). 

Similarity check training

Video of: September 6th 2023 conducted by Turnitin. 

Video of: November 29th 2023 conducted by Turnitin.

Video of: March 18th 2024 conducted by Turnitin.

 AI detection tools

We are not currently planning to use the Turnitin AI detection tool at Brunel. There are many reasons for this decision, which we will expand on shortly on the APDU pages (https://brightspace.brunel.ac.uk/d2l/home/24715) and institutional AI guidance on the intranet (https://www.staff.brunel.ac.uk/principles-for-ai-in-teaching-and-learning).

 However, two primary reasons for not using AI detection are:

• Equity – AI detectors are relatively easy to fool, and therefore only weaker students will be caught and punished.
• False positives – Most systems admit to at least 1% of false positive results, which is far too high for unfounded allegations of cheating.

 Please do not be tempted to upload students work to third party online AI detectors, as there are many IP and GDPR issues to which University would then be exposed.

If you have any questions regarding this policy, please contact the Head of Digital Education (colin.loughlin@brunel.ac.uk).