The University community has free access to two different web-based originality-checking tools geared to helping writers avoid plagiarism. Below is a brief overview to each and how best to use them.
Turnitin and iThenticate require submissions to be made by the sole or first-author of the work. They are not intended for use by second-party individuals to check originality.
Turnitin was made specifically for classroom use and is intended for reviewing student work. Similar to Blackboard’s SafeAssign service, Turnitin can be integrated into Canvas courses and allows instructors to review originality reports of student work. Turnitin compares student work against 60 billion web pages; 600 million student papers that have been submitted to the Turnitin database; over 100 million articles from professional journals, periodicals, and publications. Submitted documents are added to a database of material from colleges and universities around the country.
Turnitin training and support are provided by Information Technology Services. To request training and see upcoming training sessions please visit the ITS event calendar: https://events.unl.edu/its/upcoming/
iThenticate is meant to assist academic authors in avoiding plagiarism and copyright infringement when preparing items for publication and is NOT intended for classroom use. This program is often used by publishers to check originality of submitted articles prior to publication. Papers reviewed using this service are NOT added to or indexed in any other database and remain the proprietary property of the individual author.
The University Libraries, in partnership with the Office of Research & Economic Development, is offering a mediated pilot program to evaluate iThenticate. Members of the University community wishing to participate in this pilot must agree to a confidential, mediated review of their submission with Library faculty. Please fill out the iThenticate Request Form located here: https://libraries.unl.edu/ithenticate-pilot.
Find more information about the differences between Turnitin and iThenticate here: http://www.ithenticate.com/resources/academic#compare
More details at: https://go.unl.edu/kr0i