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 does not detect generative AI.

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.

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.

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.

Click here for instructions.

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.

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.