Understanding Similarity Reports
Turnitin Similarity Reports quantify how similar your work is to other pieces of writing, highlighting any areas in your paper that match outside sources.
Student Submissions
Turnitin does not check for plagiarism. It compares a student's work against the Turnitin database, and highlight wherever your writing is similar to one of our sources. The Similarity Report provides a summary of details, including the sources matched to your submission.
Similarity Score
When a Similarity Report is available for viewing, it will show a similarity score. The similarity score is the percentage of matched text your submission contains. Turnitin calculates this by dividing the total words in a submission by the amount of words matched to outside sources. Additional information:
Resubmissions
Turnitin will generate a new similarity report for each resubmission you do for your Canvas assignment. Don't worry about self-matching, because your similarity score will only reflect your most recent submission. Also, instructors are able to review all submissions to a Canvas assignment. Note: Overwritten or resubmitted papers may not generate a new Similarity Report for a full 24 hours. This delay is automatic and allows resubmissions to correctly generate without matching to the previous draft.