Turnitin is a service that matches text from student work against a database of previous assessments, websites and published work. Turnitin is not able to detect plagiarism, as there are many legitimate reasons why text from an assessment may match other work, and Turnitin cannot identify the reason for the match. Nonetheless, by drawing the attention of students and teaching staff to matches, Turnitin can contribute to improving students' standard of academic writing.
In the Department of Anthropology, we make the Turnitin reports available to students for all their formative work and summative assessments. Reviewing the Turnitin report may help the student to check they have marked quotes accurately and provided citations. The report can also indicate areas of an essay where there has been only minimal paraphrasing of a source text, and this might indicate the student has not been careful about using their own words to express ideas or make arguments.
If a student submits well ahead of their deadline, they may use the Turnitin report to revise and improve their submission. It remains a student's responsibility to submit by the deadline. Reviewing a Turnitin report is not an excuse for late submission.
Before using Turnitin, all students taking Anthropology courses must ensure they have read the Department's Turnitin Policy below.
The Department of Anthropology Departmental Turnitin Statement and Student Agreement
The following statement sets out how Turnitin is to be used within the Department of Anthropology and the terms by which students agree to use Turnitin.
Students agree to ensure they have read and understood:
The Department of Anthropology agrees to use Turnitin as a student academic writing development tool by providing students access to their Turnitin similarity report and similarity score (%) for all formative work and all summative coursework assessments at UG and MSc levels.
The Department of Anthropology believes that good academic writing is a crucial skill that students need to develop during their studies. There are no short cuts to achieving this, and students must take a comprehensive approach to improving their writing, including participating in departmental workshops and seminars on writing skills and effective note taking, learning from the guidance and feedback provided on formative and summative work, and reflecting on the academic writing and referencing styles and techniques that students encounter in their reading.
The Department of Anthropology continues to believe that the above methods remain the most important means by which students will improve their academic writing. Nonetheless, the Department accepts that students learn in diverse ways and, for some students, Turnitin has the potential to act as an additional development tool by drawing their attention to places in their writing where there may be weaknesses in paraphrasing, the accurate marking of quotations and/or acknowledgement of sources. Turnitin also offers students the potential to check and revise their work prior to final submission, which offers additional developmental benefits.
Therefore, to ensure that none of our students is disadvantaged and to maximise the learning resources available to all our students, the Department of Anthropology has decided to give access to the Turnitin reports for all formative work and summative coursework assessments at undergraduate and MSc levels.
Despite making Turnitin available to our students, the Department of Anthropology is aware of significant limitations in the accuracy and reliability of Turnitin’s text-matching functionality. For example, Turnitin reports may identify matches even when quotations have been properly marked and correct citations provided. Conversely, Turnitin reports may fail to identify problematic areas either because the source text is not in Turnitin’s repository or because of technical limitations in the way Turnitin matches text.
Given these limitations, students must never use Turnitin reports or similarity scores as the sole standard by which to judge whether their work meets the requirements for good academic practice. In addition, the Department of Anthropology expects students to make full use of the support and training provided by LSE LIFE to equip themselves with the knowledge necessary to understand and interpret their Turnitin reports properly. LSE LIFE provides a three-tier approach to training (Online/self-access materials, Workshops and One-to-one support).
All Anthropology students making use of their Turnitin reports are expected at a minimum to have completed LSE LIFE’s Academic Integrity module. This module can be found in both LSE LIFE’s Prepare to learn at LSE (undergraduates) and Prepare to learn at LSE (postgraduates) Moodle courses.
If students still have questions about how to interpret their Turnitin report or how they can improve their writing in response to their Turnitin report, they should contact lselife@lse.ac.uk for details on further training in the use of Turnitin.
In addition to the core Turnitin support offered by LSE Life, the Department of Anthropology offers some supplementary advice on academic writing in Anthropology through our student handbooks, seminars, mentor meetings and Moodle pages.
Students agree to use Turnitin on the basis prescribed by the Department in this statement.
Students should be aware that where Turnitin is used within the Department, it is applied universally (i.e. to all submissions within a specific assessment or not at all - blanket use).
Students need to be aware that academic judgement is the first and most important indicator of academic misconduct and that either a high or low percentage Turnitin similarity score (%) can be equally investigated. Therefore, there is no similarity score (%) threshold (whether low or high) within the Department that excludes them from an initial investigation.
In the Department of Anthropology, students’ formative work is not added to the Turnitin repository, as students are allowed to draw freely on their own formative work in their summative assessments. The final versions of summative work submitted to the Department will be added to the Turnitin repository, in line with the terms of the Conditions of Registration:
“Copies of all papers submitted to the software will be retained as source documents in the iParadigms reference database (held in the US) solely for the purpose of text matching against future submissions. Use of the Turnitin UK service shall be subject to such Terms and Conditions of Use as may be agreed between iParadigms and LSE from time to time and posted on the Turnitin UK website.”
Queries about the Anthropology Department’s policies on Turnitin, academic misconduct or plagiarism should be addressed in the first instance to your departmental administrators, who can be contacted at anthro.admin@lse.ac.uk.
Updated September 2024