This article describes how to use Turnitin plagiarism detection within Cirrus.
Turnitin plagiarism control (Originality)
Turnitin plagiarism detection (Originality or Similarity) is a support tool that allows authors to check the originality of submitted work by comparing candidate submissions with articles and websites available on the internet.
Visit the Turnitin website for more information about Turnitin.
- Essay: Supported
- Office 365: Supported
- File response: Not yet supported (planned for a later release).
Turnitin in Cirrus
Turnitin integrates with Cirrus as an add-on. You must hold a Turnitin licence for their Originality product to use the integration.
If you hold a Turnitin licence, contact Cirrus Sales Support via the Customer Portal or email sales@cirrusassessment.com to enable this add-on.
Once enabled, your administrator can configure the integration in the admin panel. See the Turnitin Plagiarism developer article for setup details.
How the Turnitin integration works
Step 1: set up plagiarism control on the assessment
After the integration is activated, a new checkbox appears on the Step 2: Assessment options tab. Enable this checkbox to turn on plagiarism detection for the assessment.
Step 2: Marking
Plagiarism control results appear directly on the submission screen, above the candidate's answer.
When marking questions with plagiarism control enabled, a percentage appears indicating the likelihood that plagiarism has occurred. Click View report next to the percentage to open the full Turnitin report.
Plagiarism threshold
Essay submissions with fewer than 20 words will not generate a plagiarism report. The integration requires at least 20 words to process a submission.
Plagiarism limit
Turnitin converts the submission text to UTF-8. If the converted text exceeds 2 MB, a plagiarism report will not be generated. Submissions also cannot exceed 800 pages of text.
EULA for users
To process submissions through Turnitin and view Similarity Reports, users must agree to an End-User Licence Agreement (EULA). The EULA is shown once to each user the first time they click View report when marking an essay question, or again if the agreement is updated by Turnitin.
EULA for candidates
Candidates must also agree to the Turnitin EULA before their submission can be processed. The EULA is shown once after the candidate opens the exam, or again if the agreement is updated by Turnitin.
Order of appearance:
- Cirrus NDA page (optional)
- EULA
- Cirrus Welcome page
If a candidate declines the EULA, a warning is displayed and the candidate cannot continue. They will be logged out.
Welcome page
When plagiarism control is enabled for an assessment, the welcome page includes a notification about this.
Plagiarism (Similarity) report
The plagiarism similarity report is generated and provided directly by Turnitin. For details, refer to Turnitin's documentation.
AI writing detection
Turnitin now supports AI writing detection, which identifies AI-generated text across multiple languages. It provides results as a percentage and is designed to maintain a low false positive rate. This feature is included within other Turnitin products and is not available as a standalone solution. For more details, visit the Turnitin AI Writing Detection FAQ.
Troubleshooting
I cannot see the Turnitin Similarity report
The candidate's answer may be too short. The submission must contain at least 20 words.
The similarity report is empty or grey
Try opening the report again.
When opening the similarity report I receive an authentication error
Refresh the Cirrus page and try again. Your Turnitin session may have expired.
