Turnitin is an online service which does not require any additional software to be installed on your PC. It contains a database of 45 billion+ websites, online articles (including archived material) and student work against which draft and/or final student assignments may be compared. Similarities are matched and academic judgement must then be used to interpret whether the matches in the similarity report are appropriate (properly quoted and cited, or an established term) or inappropriate (inadequately paraphrased not adequately cited).

Queen’s University subscribes to an electronic originality checking service, called TurnitinUK.

A quick guide to Turnitin can be found below: