Online Plagiarism Prevention System

Turnitin is a Web-based plagiarism detection software system that allows members of the faculty to check students' papers for plagiarism. Students can also submit their papers to Turnitin, as a deterrent to plagiarism.

• Papers and other sources on the Internet
• Articles in the ProQuest database
• Millions of student papers already submitted to Turnitin

• Distinguish between properly cited text and plagiarized text
• Catch improperly paraphrased text, made-up facts, or false citation
• Analyze students’ writing style

To begin using Turnitin, please contact Dr. Saiid Ganjalizadeh at ganjalizadeh@cua.edu or 202-319-6411 or submit a Help request form. Once your account is set up, you will receive an email from Turnitin with your username and password.

If you do not have any experience with Turnitin, please click here to get answers to some frequently asked questions you may have.

It is important to know that any use of Turnitin must be in full compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

If you are submitting a paper to Turnitin, please make sure any identifying information about the student, such as name or id number, is not attached to the document submitted. The government agency (The Family Policy Compliance Office) charged with enforcing FERPA has held:

"...an instructor or other school official may disclose student papers (graded or ungraded) to Turnitin for conducting an originality evaluation without written consent, if all personally identifiable information has been removed because it would not be considered a “disclosure” under FERPA."

The school may require students to submit their papers to Turnitin before submitting them to their instructors. In this instance, the paper will not be considered an “education record” under FERPA until it is maintained by professor or the school.

To view the full FPCO guidance on this topic please see http://counsel.cua.edu/FERPA/FPCO//St.%20Tohomas%20Aquinas%20College.pdf

http://counsel.cua.edu/FERPA/FPCO/index.cfm#new

Additional information on FERPA may be found at http://counsel.cua.edu/ferpa.

Supported Browsers in Turnitin: As of August 1st, 2009, Turnitin will no longer support versions of Internet Explorer earlier than 7.0. Users of earlier versions of Internet Explorer are encouraged to upgrade to version 7.0 (or better) or access Turnitin using another supported browser (see a list at http://www.turnitin.com/static/system_requirements.html).

Turnitin Online Training: iParadigms, LLC - the developers of Turnitin offers online training sessions which are twice per day.  The training session is very beneficial for new users, and also serves as a great refresher for current users.  Please find a link to the training schedule below: 

In addition, self-guided videos are available online at http://turnitin.com/static/training.html, scroll down to "Narrated Flash Videos".