iThenticate FAQ - Graduate Writing Center

iT FAQ introduction

The iThenticate FAQ


These questions and answers have been prepared so students, instructors, and thesis advisors can better understand iThenticate—how it works and the role it plays in supporting academic integrity in thesis publications.

We encourage students to ask the Graduate Writing Center for iThenticate reports on draft class papers, thesis proposals, and early drafts of thesis chapters. These reports and the GWC’s multifaceted guidance help students learn how to take notes and attribute properly before the thesis submission stage.

See our iThenticate infographic for quick tips on reading iThenticate reports. Our philosophy on the relationship between coaching, learning, and iThenticate, as well as an explanation of the pitfalls of iThenticate reports and cautions about interpreting them, can be found in our "Plagiarism Prevention & iThenticate" handout.

Your comments, corrections, and suggestions are welcome. Please email suggestions to the GWC. For policy-related issues, please contact TPO/GWC Director, Dr. Sandra Leavitt.


Nested Applications
How iThenticate Works

How iThenticate Works

iThenticate is a Turnitin product and, as such, uses the same plagiarism-detection method as Turnitin. iThenticate and Turnitin are the industry-leading software programs to check the originality of text against other sources. The software identifies text copied verbatim from other published and internet sources that is not properly quoted, or that is patch-written, which means it is not properly paraphrased.

NPS has a license for the software. iThenticate is not perfect, but it is one aid against plagiarism.

iThenticate is a Turnitin product and, as such, uses the same plagiarism-detection method as Turnitin. However, iThenticate has some unique features that make it a better match for our needs at NPS:

  • By default, iThenticate does not save uploaded documents to its cloud repository. This is in line with NPS cybersecurity policy.
  • Whereas Turnitin struggles with documents over 100 pages, iThenticate can easily handle documents up to 400 pages long.
  • Unlike Turnitin, iThenticate searches the ProQuest dissertations database and internal documents, which helps us identify more matches to academic sources.
  • Also unlike Turnitin, iThenticate does not include class papers from other universities in the similarity report results. This eliminates a good share of false-positive matches to sources that cannot be easily tracked down.
  • iThenticate offers reporting features that are easier to use and more powerful than Turnitin's.

Although iThenticate does not come equipped with Feedback Studio, Turnitin's learning management function, its interface filing structure still allows users to create folders and groups, much the same way Turnitin sorts documents by classes. NPS faculty and staff, as always, may use Sakai for learning management needs.

According to Turnitin, the company has analyzed "over 54 million student papers from over 1,000 U.S. higher education institutions" ("Resources for Educators," accessed November 17, 2015.) It supports document checks in a dozen languages.

iThenticate algorithmically checks for unoriginal content. Its scope includes a vast repository of previously uploaded documents, published materials, and the internet. When a document is uploaded for checking, iThenticate compares every phrase of five (5) (by default) or more words in the document against everything in its repositories. It regenerates the document with any matches color-coded; this is the iThenticate “similarity report.” Each matched source is given a color and number.

At the end of the report, a percentage is assigned to each source/color, which indicates the percentage of the whole document that matches that source. A composite percentage is given as well, indicating the percentage of the whole document that matches all identified sources.

The report can be viewed in iThenticate's Document Viewer by the person who uploaded the document for review or downloaded from iThenticate as a PDF.

No.

iThenticate recognizes the structure of passages, so that a passage with simple word substitutions (e.g., "helped" in place of "assisted") will still trigger a match. Unlike patch-writing, proper paraphrasing will not trigger a match.

Not necessarily.

In a formatted NPS thesis, boilerplate text accounts for about 5% of the content. Numerous footnotes with lengthy book titles or URLs can contribute a sizeable amount to the composite percentage. We have seen theses with an iThenticate score of 6% that contain significant attribution errors and other theses with scores above 20% that are uniformly well-attributed.

No.

Studies show that its algorithm only catches about two-thirds of unoriginal material (Carl Straumsheim, "What Is Detected?,Inside Higher Ed, July 14, 2015).

Also, iThenticate can't identify well-paraphrased passages that lack citations, unattributed borrowed images, raw data in images, or material copied from sources not in its repositories (e.g., undigitized books).

No.

iThenticate is much like a spell-checker. It simply identifies matches of a certain length to passages found elsewhere.

Matches can include genuinely misattributed material. They also include false positives, or matches that do not meet the definition of plagiarism. Therefore, someone must review every match in the report to determine whether a match might be plagiarism or if it is simply a false positive.

Here is a partial list of false positives:

  • Common phrases, such as "The purpose of this thesis is to…" (7 words), "This page intentionally left blank" (5 words), "The current President of the United States is Joe Biden" (10 words), and "I would like to thank my wife, son, daughter, and dog for…" (12 words)
  • Longer proper nouns, such as "the Director of Public Safety for the City of Philadelphia" (10 words)
  • Book titles (because they're italicized, not between quotation marks)
  • Boilerplate NPS thesis template text
  • Footnote-style citations
  • Long URLs
  • Properly cited quotes that span two pages (iThenticate stumbles on page breaks)

Usually.

iThenticate's Document Viewer hyperlinks its color-coded passages, which sometimes lead to the original web source. If not, Googling the color-coded text may locate the source.

How To Use iThenticate

How to Use iThenticate

Faculty can use iThenticate to check all papers submitted to them by students for any class assignment, or only those papers that show signs of potential plagiarism upon review (see FAQs, Skill Development for signs of potential plagiarism).

We recommend letting students know on your syllabus whether all or some submitted papers may be run through iThenticate and that students are expected to adhere to the Academic Honor Code. These are common practices at many universities.

Advisors, co-advisors, and second readers may want to run drafts of their advisees’ thesis chapters through iThenticate as chapters are developed, so they can, if necessary, counsel the student early on. If plagiarism in even draft chapters appears extensive and intentional, faculty have the option, per the Honor Code, to report their student to the Deputy Dean of Students for a possible honor board.

Or advisors may run a Near-final Draft thesis through iThenticate before they or their student signs the Thesis Release and Approval Form, attesting that the thesis is compliant with the Academic Honor Code (student), meets academic standards (advisors and chairs), and is ready for release (student and faculty).

Faculty members; contract advisors and second readers; program officers; and library, GWC, and TPO faculty, staff, and contractors.

Currently, students are not authorized to have their own NPS iThenticate accounts (see “Why can’t students get iThenticate accounts?” under the FAQs, Additional Policies).

Faculty and staff members can email a request to software@nps.edu. You’ll be assigned an account with your username and will receive a temporary password that you’ll want to change once inside iThenticate.

No; it’s relatively easy.

iThenticate allows for simple organization through folders and folder groups. See the iThenticate User Guide.

That said, it takes practice to quickly differentiate between real problems and false positives in similarity reports. Contact the GWC at writingcenter@nps.edu if you'd like one of our staff members to analyze a similarity report for you.

Word docs, text files, and PDFs. LaTeX files can be saved as PDFs and then uploaded. For a full list of supported file types, see the iThenticate website.

IMPORTANT NOTE: All documents must be publicly releasable with no restrictions.

Yes.

It won’t allow documents over 40 MB or 400 pages. To submit a large Word doc, first convert it to PDF, which should shrink the file size by 80–90%. Then save the PDF as a "reduced size" file. Or the Word or PDF document can be saved and run through iThenticate chapter by chapter.

When reviewing a thesis iThenticate report, a trained writing coach evaluates every color-coded passage to determine whether it meets the characteristics of plagiarism or is a candidate for possible plagiarism.

The evaluator adds comments to the report PDF, explaining the problems and offering recommendations for revision. He or she may recommend going over the report in person or by phone with any writing coach. He or she recommends students with apparent issues discuss the report and evaluation with advisors.

The evaluator may also comment on iThenticate's false-positives to help the student understand the report. (See FAQs, How iThenticate Works for more guidelines on evaluation criteria.)

Finally, comments may be added to explain how to fix a false-positive, such as adding a missing quotation mark.

The iThenticate thesis review does not include checks for well-paraphrased ideas that are not cited, which is still plagiarism. This must be done manually by the author with guidance from advisors.

Yes, if the problems are non-trivial.

In particular, iThenticate may flag passages that are field-specific common knowledge and thus exempt from citation requirements. Advisors can help with this determination. They can also stress with authority the importance of citing, quoting, and paraphrasing correctly.

How the NPS Thesis Processing Office and Graduate Writing Center Use iThenticate

How the NPS Thesis Processing Office and Graduate Writing Center Use iThenticate

The TPO, as the NPS unit that publishes theses, is responsible within its resource base for publishing theses that do not contain knowingly plagiarized material or personally identifiable information (PII), meet copyediting and formatting standards, have all necessary signatures, are properly marked with the faculty-designated DoD distribution statement, and have permission to use copyrighted material.

iThenticate is an automated tool that allows users to more easily and quickly:

  1. Identify issues with verbatim copied material that hasn't been cited and quoted
  2. Identify incomplete paraphrasing
  3. Teach proper citing, quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing methods while documents are still in draft stage.

Any student who has been away from academia for a few years may have forgotten some of the attribution norms and rules. Still, all NPS students are responsible for producing classwork and theses that are free of plagiarism, whether intentional or unintentional.

Few faculty members have used iThenticate. When used infrequently, iThenticate takes more time and effort to use. Faculty members are especially strapped for time.

Thesis processors and writing coaches are trained on how to coach students to properly cite, quote, and paraphrase. Most of them also use iThenticate often enough to maintain proficiency. Finally, members of our team share template explanations, emails, and best practices, so as to standardize requirements and resource availability across the school.

This service is supplementary to efforts by students, faculty, and the Dean of Students. Students are best served when they work hand-in-hand with faculty and writing coaches about the proper use of sources.

Yes, but only under three conditions:

  1. The Initial Draft appeared to have serious plagiarism issues.
  2. No Initial Draft was submitted.
  3. Thesis processors notice signs of potential problems, such as changes in tone, writing style, font, margins, citation style, and the like during Final Draft review.

The GWC/TPO Director will contact the advisors and department chair for further discussion. If the problems are minor and inadvertent, they can be corrected and the thesis resubmitted for processing. If the apparent plagiarism is moderate to significant and appears willful, the case is turned over to the Dean of Students for an Honor Board (see Academic Honor Code).

Yes—this is either strongly encouraged or required for students whose Initial Draft report showed "Some Concerns" or "Concerns" (as indicated in the subject line and body of the report email). The student or advisor requests an additional report by emailing Thesis Processing.

If an Initial Draft report "does not identify significant plagiarism issues" per the email, then the thesis is not eligible for a Near-final Draft report from the Thesis Processing Office. However, students can make appointments with the writing coaches to review any revisions and to run additional chapters through iThenticate.

No.

The student should coordinate requests for additional runs by emailing Thesis Processing. The request may return to the same report evaluator, depending on availability.

Evaluators rely on iThenticate’s color-coding to direct their attention. They look for material that has not been attributed properly—material that has been copied from another source but lacks quotation marks, block quoting, or citations; quotations that are not formatted correctly; directly quoted material that has a citation but no quotation marks; and incomplete paraphrasing. The evaluator then recommends what needs to be done to correct the issue.

Often, the evaluator will recommend that the student consult with his or her advisor, especially on text that may be field-specific common knowledge. The evaluator may comment on iThenticate’s false-positives so that the student will understand exactly what iThenticate provides.

If the evaluator spots potential issues in the text not identified by iThenticate, they may investigate using independent means.

See the Thesis Processing Office's "Advice for Acing Your iThenticate Review" for common iThenticate report comments.

They are placed in the PDF to the right of the color-coded passage being commented on. Hover over the comment balloon to see the text of the comment.

  1. Open the PDF.
  2. Select the “Comment” button (upper right).
  3. Select the “Comments List.”
  4. Click through each comment, in turn, from the list.
  5. The PDF will automatically go to the page where the comment was placed.

When Thesis Processing is overloaded, some of the writing coaches voluntarily pitch in by running and evaluating thesis iThenticate reports. This is appropriate, given that a significant portion of students need some guidance to make corrections.

Final Draft analysis is always done by the GWC/TPO Director or the GWC Deputy Director.

This is encouraged so students learn early the proper methods of citing, quoting, and paraphrasing. The hope is that, by thesis time, the student will be more critically engaging sources, know the correct methods, and be following them.

The procedure is to make an appointment with a writing coach, email the coach the document at least 24 hours ahead of time, and request an iThenticate evaluation.

Coaches will ask students to confirm that to the best of their knowledge the draft paper contains no restricted information.

The coach will run the document through iThenticate and go over the results with the student during the appointment, explaining proper methods (if necessary) and false positives.

Additional Policies

Additional Policies

No! Until NPS has its own standalone server at iThenticate (which we are working on), restricted documents should not be uploaded into iThenticate. Classified documents should never be uploaded. Students should be given this warning if your class material or their theses might include restricted information.

Currently at NPS, only faculty and members of the Thesis Processing Office, the Graduate Writing Center, and the Dudley Knox Library are authorized to have NPS iThenticate accounts. This may change in time.

Students currently are not given accounts for these reasons:

  1. Students can use iThenticate's feedback to help them willfully avoid detection of plagiarism (see Marc Parry, "Software Catches (and Also Helps) Young Plagiarists," Chronicle of Higher Education, November 6, 2011).
  2. If students need guidance on how to properly cite, quote, and paraphrase others' work, they are more likely to receive it if the iThenticate report is provided to them by a faculty member or writing coach.

The student author, his or her advisors and second reader, the department chair, the writing coach who is evaluating and providing the report, and the GWC/TPO Director.

Yes, but Thesis Processing reserves the right to run Final Draft, signed-off versions through iThenticate before publishing them. This represents a zero-tolerance goal for publishing theses with plagiarized material.

Although students are instructed in academic requirements for attribution in multiple ways, a sizable percentage of students write theses with some misunderstanding, ignorance, or lack of commitment to applying citation rules. The writing coaches and thesis processors are trained in how to cite, quote, paraphrase, and summarize others' work.

iT video

Plagiarism

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the borrowing of another author’s or source's words, ideas, images, or data without giving credit. Written works are assumed to be the author's invention, unless otherwise indicated. Quoted, paraphrased, and summarized information from others must be attributed to its source.

The exception is that common knowledge and field-specific common knowledge need not be cited if it is rarely disputed.

Yes. The NPS Academic Honor Code, NPSINST 5370.4D (10 October 2018), uses the Naval Academy definition, defining plagiarism as "the use of the words, information, insights, or ideas of another without crediting that person through proper citation. Unintentional plagiarism, or sloppy scholarship, is academically unacceptable; intentional plagiarism is dishonorable. You can avoid plagiarism by fully and openly crediting all sources used."

(Department of the Navy, Academic Honor Code, NPSINST 5370.4D, Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2018.)

Academia at large and the publishing world sometimes do not distinguish between source misuse and willful misattribution in assessing whether authors are guilty of a violation. Authors are expected to know the rules.

The NPS Honor Code definition of plagiarism [see previous question] differentiates between unintentional and intentional plagiarism.

Regardless, Thesis Processing will not knowingly publish a thesis that contains plagiarized material.

By the Honor Code rules, when a Final Draft thesis has been submitted to Thesis Processing and the student has signed the Thesis Release and Approval Form, the student is henceforth responsible for any instances of apparently intentional plagiarism and must be referred to the Honor Board if instances are discovered.

Final Drafts with potential plagiarism may be discussed with the advisors and chair. The GWC/TPO Director determines whether to forward the case to the Dean of Students for an Honor Board or to work with the student to correct inadvertent plagiarism.

Yes, if not attributed properly. If you use text created by a generative AI tool, its use must be disclosed. Refer to the citation guidance for generative AI.

No. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT cannot be used for plagiarism detection because they do not have any “memory” of sources they have trained on.

Not always. Some instances of misattribution appear to be clear-cut cases of plagiarism. Other instances (identified by iThenticate) fall into a gray area, either because of their abbreviated length or because the identified passages may be common field-specific phrases. Students should discuss such issues with their professors, thesis advisors, or other subject matter experts.

Undoubtedly. The internet, while a fantastic tool for finding information, facilitates a cut-and-paste culture in which some students, either through sloth or ignorance, believe they can produce papers and theses simply by corralling information from the web.

A 2013 study of U.S. colleges indicated that plagiarism occurred for four major reasons:

  1. Lack of research skills (34%)
  2. Lack of time (26%)
  3. Careless note-taking (22%)
  4. Confusion about how to cite sources (18%)

(Rob Greenburg, "The Problem of Plagiarism among Students," HubPages, Intellectual Property Law, last modified March 11, 2013.)

  • Evidence of shortcuts in other areas (sloppiness)
  • Few or no citations
  • Sudden changes of tone or style
  • Change in formatting, including font size or style, margins, and citation style
  • Text indicates an outside source, but there is no citation with or near the text
  • Weak organization and argumentation
  • Quite a bit of information but little analysis
  • Inclusion of irrelevant material
  • Clearly borrowed figures and table data with no source listed.

Often, the literature review, which is most dependent on existing literature, is where plagiarism occurs. It's less likely to be found in the original research chapters. But we've seen theses that are littered with misattribution throughout the document, including, even, in the abstract, introduction, and conclusion.

We also see plagiarism more frequently in figures and tables than in other areas. 

Many universities require such a statement on all syllabi. At NPS, it is a personal preference, but we encourage doing so, if only to open the conversation with students and encourage them to ask if they have questions.

By signing off on a thesis, the student is giving his or her assurance that the work is original unless indicated otherwise by clear and complete attribution. This signature marks the threshold for plagiarism that separates a work in progress from a completed work submitted for publication.

Principles of Citing

Principles of Citing

Ideas, information, models, theories, directly borrowed language, images, or data from other sources that are not common knowledge or field-specific common knowledge. Controversial information, even if commonly known, should also be cited.

Identifying the source author affords the reader full opportunity to validate or falsify the authority, bias, or any other form of legitimacy that reflects on the accuracy, quality, or evidentiary value of the material.

By the same token, the reader has the right to assess the source medium, whether peer-reviewed journal or academic-press book, a publication with less rigorous standards, website matter, spoken words, private correspondence, and the like.

Finally, the ethics of academia require that authors and other sources be given appropriate credit for their original words, ideas, and data.

Yes, if the material used is from a copyrighted source. In that case, the "fair use" provisions of copyright law may permit use of limited amounts of copyrighted material—less than 10% of the total or less than one page of quoted text—without the permission of the original author.

Failure to properly credit the original author, however, weakens a fair use claim. See the DKL page Copyright at NPS for more information.

Yes. Images found in copyrighted publications are considered to have their own separate copyright. They are also more likely to be used in full, as opposed to 10% or less. See the DKL Copyright at NPS page for more information.

Yes. While basic citation rules and formatting apply, the citation for a figure or table should be included in the figure or table title.

If a figure or table is borrowed exactly from another source with no changes, the borrower lists "Source:" before the citation. If the figure or table is only partially borrowed or has been changed in any way, the borrower lists "Adapted from" before the citation. If the components of the figure or table come from multiple sources, all should be listed in the citation.

By making it reasonably clear that information in a sentence comes from a source. For instance, with citations, signal phrases, or sentence-flow cues.

If direct quotes are (generally) less than five lines long, they are placed between quotation marks as part of a sentence, then the source is cited within or at the end of the sentence. It is preferred that the sentence begins with a signal phrase or other text, not the quotation.

If direct quotes are (generally) more than five lines long, they are set off in block-quote style, meaning the quote follows on a new indented line and is single spaced, and the citation is placed at the end of the quote, after the final period. Quotation marks are not used around block quotes. It is preferred that a signal phrase introducing the source appears in the paragraph text that precedes the quotation.

See more tips for direct quotes in the Thesis Processing Office's "Paraphrasing and Quoting" handout.

Not in most cases. Italicizing quoted material is unconventional and blurs the distinction with italics being used as emphasis elsewhere in the paper. This format is not used by any of the dozen or so style guides used at NPS for theses.

By adding a citation or signal phrase to the sentence in which the item occurs, or by clarifying the source through sentence flow.

Rarely. It must be clear at all times who is contributing: the paper author or the source author.

When using a source for the first time, a sound policy is to identify the source’s credentials as authority for the material to set up the paraphrase, then cite the source at the end of the paraphrase.

For subsequent uses of the same source, use brief signal phrases or citations to clearly indicate the start- and end-points of the source’s contribution. In the absence of clear citations or signal phrases, the reader assumes that the ideas contained in a sentence belong to the author. For tips, see the Thesis Processing Office's "Using Signal Phrases Effectively" handout.

If a direct quote from the same source is used within a paragraph of paraphrased or summarized material, the sentence with the quote should be cited.

The text preceding the list should indicate the source using a signal phrase and, if appropriate, its qualifications as evidence.

A citation should be added to the end of the last list item, on the same line. Quotation marks are not needed, as long as the list is indented and single-spaced.

For more guidance, see the Thesis Processing Office's "Citing Bulleted and Numbered Lists" handout.

Yes. If multiple voices are blended into a single list, the author must make clear who the source is at all times. Normally, each paraphrased or quoted item would have its own citation. In such lists, quotation marks are required for quoted material.

Skill Development

Skill Development

For more guidance, see Helping Students Write and the Thesis Processing Office's Citation Guides webpage.

Yes. Not requiring this is interpreted by many students as a lack of requirement in general. At thesis time, students become angry when they discover that habits that have been tacitly approved by instructors are no longer sufficient. Most important, coursework offers opportunities for faculty to teach students how to incorporate sources, from thinking about and evaluating sources to incorporating sources following academic norms.

Because there are vast and varying style requirements between the citation styles, learning an field-appropriate style early will prevent students from having to quickly and/or sloppily learn a style while also completing thesis research and writing. Practicing a citation style early and often also helps students learn what source information is necessary during notetaking; developing good notetaking habits saves students immeasurable time expended re-finding sources later. Sloppy notetaking is a significant contributor to plagiarism.

Most NPS students have been out of school for years. They may have forgotten the rules, or they may have come from technical disciplines that didn’t stress writing skills. Additionally, the military services have a laissez-faire culture of repurposing written material without attribution, which inculcates bad habits for students re-entering academia.

Writing coaches, thesis processors, and librarians regularly work with resident and distance-learning students on these issues. For NPS online resources, see these links: