Abstract:

Plagiarism is a major problem for innovation, especially in academic writing. It is considered a form of stealing work developed by innovators when impostors pretend to be innovators. This raises a number of questions. Is it stealing? Stealing what? Yes, taking someone’s academic writing and ideas and pretending that you are the originator of it is stealing ideas. This paper presents a critical analysis of the use of Turnitin software in assisting in the detection of plagiarism. Turnitin, a proprietary Internet-based plagiarism detection system, is one of the tools designed to ease plagiarism detection. It provides a fast way of electronically checking documents and encourages correct citation of other literature sources. Often academics focus on the similarity index without holistically analysing the contents on the Turnitin report. A number of questions require interrogation regarding what is acceptable and not, self- plagiarism, the similarity indices which maybe applicable to levels of studies such as undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels. The paper also seeks to instill a common understanding of the use of plagiarism software and finding benchmarks, which can be used to assist the SMU academic community. It also discusses the limitations/weaknesses of Turnitin.

Keywords:

Turnitin, plagiarism, plagiarism software, contract cheating, copyright, databases/ repositories.