Information for Students
Penn State has purchased a license to the plagiarism prevention resource Turnitin.com. This resource is being made available to all faculty throughout the Penn State community. Any written work you produce for any Penn State course may be checked for originality through the Turnitin.com Web site.
Penn State takes violations of the University Code of Conduct related to Academic Integrity very seriously. As a result, procedures have been developed for how allegations of academic dishonesty are to be handled including sanctioning. Academic integrity is an essential component of any educational community. Having academic integrity means being honest about where you get information for your written assignments and giving credit for ideas and text that you copy. Penn State policy requires faculty to include a statement in the syllabus for each course addressing academic integrity so you will know exactly what is expected of you in each class.
Here are some resources on Penn State academic integrity policy:
The new Senate Policy 43-00
http://www.psu.edu/ufs/policies/43-00.html
Your college or department may have a statement they want instructors to use. Links to some statements recommended by different colleges and campuses are available at http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/cyberplag/links.html#policy.
Penn State's Academic Integrity Policy
http://www.psu.edu/dept/ufs/policies/47-00.html#49-20
Statement from the Council of Academic Deans
http://www.psu.edu/provost/integrity.htm
Academic Integrity Procedures - Academic Administrative Policies and Procedures
Manual , G-9
http://www.psu.edu/dept/oue/aappm/G-9.html
Academic Integrity Statements
http://www.psu.edu/dus/handbook/integrity.html
An important part of your education at Penn State involves learning to write,
use sources, and correctly cite the sources you use. In learning to use and
cite sources, you also need to know about copyright rules and what constitutes
plagiarism. Several Web sites have been created to provide this information.
iStudy for Success! instructional module on Academic Integrity, Plagiarism,
and Copyright
http://istudy.psu.edu/modules.html#Integrity
Penn State student site on plagiarism
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/cyberplag/cyberplagstudent.html
Penn State site on copyright
http://www.psu.edu/ur/copyright.html
In addition to sites at Penn State, you should find TurnItIn.com's FAQ on
plagiarism and
copyright useful.
http://www.turnitin.com/research_site/e_faqs.html
Turnitin also has some useful information about citing sources.
http://www.turnitin.com/research_site/e_citation.html
Your instructor will provide specific information about whether or not Turnitin.com
will be used in your course and what will be required of you.
How Turnitin.com works
Electronic versions of written works are submitted to Turnitin.com through their Web site (http://turnitin.psu.edu), which in turn produces an "originality report." Students can access the originality report from their class inbox at Turnitin. This report shows the instructor the results of Turnitin.com's comparison of the written work to content on the Web, to Turnitin.com's database of student writing, and to some databases of common full-text journals. The quality of the report must still be evaluated independently to determine if the parts identified by Turnitin.com that are similar or identical are actually plagiarized text. This is because all matches are shown, even those that were cited properly.
Similarly, if a paper is reported as "original" by Turnitin.com, that is not necessarily airtight evidence that the paper is original. Instead, it may mean that the content was plagiarized from a work that is not available in the Turnitin.com database.
If a faculty member believes you have committed plagiarism or another infraction of the University’s Code of Conduct related to Academic Dishonesty, they will schedule a time to meet with you to review the information that has lead them to believe a violation occurred, and will allow you the opportunity to respond to the allegation. If after this meeting the faculty member still believes you are responsible, that faculty member will follow the guidelines that have been established for reporting a violation of the Academic Dishonesty section of the Code of Conduct. More information on the Academic Integrity Policy procedures can be found at http://www.psu.edu/dept/oue/aappm/G-9.html or through your College.
Need help learning to use Turnitin?
If your instructor wants you to upload your own papers to Turnitin, download this handout for brief step-by-step instructions.
Penn State's Turnitin policy limits ownership of Turnitin accounts for faculty members, Graduate Assistants, and staff members who are actively teaching a bona fide Penn State course. If your instructor isn't requiring use of Turnitin for your class, but you are interested in utilizing the program, you can still do so; however, you will need to work with your instructor to obtain access to Turnitin.
A step-by-step video is available on how to create a student Turnitin account
and submit a paper at the Turnitin Web site. Penn State is licensing only
the Plagiarism Prevention module.
Training materials and quickstart guides for Turnitin.com are located at http://turnitin.com/static/training.html.
When using these materials created by Turnitin, please be aware that Penn State's implementation of Turnitin is different in the following ways :
- Penn State licenses only the Plagiarism Prevention module.
- Penn State users don't need to create a user profile when logging in through http://turnitin.psu.edu. This means that you will have fewer steps to follow when logging in for the first time to create an account. You won't need to enter a password or create a password reminder question