Information for Faculty: Turnitin & Plagiarism

Turnitin is a subscription service that "reads" a student paper to determine how much of the material contained within it is original.   The service compares a submitted student paper with student work already in its database and articles or other materials published in selected subcription databases or via the World Wide Web.  The service then provides the student or instructor with an originality score.  The score report highlights passages that may have been directly quoted or poorly paraphrased from other sources. 

Learn how to access Cerritos College's Turnitin account.

 Cerritos College Account Information

The first time you login, you'll need to create an account.

You will need Cerritos College's account ID and join code so your personal account will be connected to the college's account.

Please contact the CTX or your dean to get these codes.

Watch this video if you have trouble creating an account.

Access instructor training materials created by Turnitin.

Learn how to set up your Turnitin account, submit a paper, and interpret your Originality check.

Visit the Cerritos College Library's Citation Guide to learn more about Turnitin.

An important component of the library's mission is to promote and develop information and research skills in Cerritos College students.  Information competency, also known as information literacy, is a key factor to keep in mind when approaching the subject of plagiarism among college students.

By making sure Cerritos College students are information competent in today's online world faculty will help promote academic integrity and fight plagiarism.

"Information competency is the ability to find, evaluate, use, and communicate information in all its various formats. It combines aspects of library literacy, research methods and technological literacy. Information competency includes consideration of the ethical and legal implications of information and requires the application of both critical thinking and communication skills."

from Information Competency in the California Community Colleges

The Cerritos College librarians work with classroom faculty to help students develop the information skills that are essential in college and beyond. The research process is a brand new concept to most incoming freshmen. Even the most web-savvy students need to be made aware of the various types and formats of information and how to use information resources fairly and honestly in an academic setting.

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• Assign and/or approve topic.
• Make sure the topic is neither too broad nor too narrow.
• Check with the librarians to see if the topic can be easily researched using Cerritos College Library resources.
• Structure your assignments so that they include the use of sources that can be found in the library or on the internet via the library's home page. This includes books, journal, magazine, and newspaper articles (both in print and online), and internet sites.
• Require that students use a certain number of each type of source. (e.g. one book, one newspaper article, two academic journal articles, one popular magazine article, one web site).
• Refer students to the Research Guides on the library home page. These guides outline the research process and list books, online resources, and web sites for a wide variety of topics and subjects. There are also guides on documentation of research and proper citation formats.
• Have students hand in assignments in stages and have them include their source lists, working bibliographies, and even copies of articles, web pages, and book chapters they'll be using.
• Require references and a bibliography in the final paper and ask students to briefly summarize their research process as well.

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• Librarians can play an important role in plagiarism prevention by introducing students to the information resources available through the library.
• The online catalog, subscription databases, and subject specific research guides provide students with a starting point for their projects and papers.
• Schedule a one-hour library instruction session in which a librarian will introduce the students to the concept of academic research.
• Librarians explain how to select and use appropriate sources, whether housed in the library or available on the web.
• Search strategies and handy searching tips are demonstrated in the different databases.
• Librarians emphasize the importance of evaluating internet web sites.
• Librarians explain the importance of maintaining source lists, citing references, and creating proper documentation using standard citation style

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• Advanced language or vocabulary
• Lack of quotations
• Anachronisms
• Unrelated sentences or paragraphs
• Mixed citation styles
• Mixed or unusual format or layout
• Suspicious bibliography
• Paper sounds familiar

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• If you suspect a student has plagiarized, ask him or her to summarize the process they followed as well as their findings.
• If a bibliography is present in the student paper, request copies of cited web sites and articles. Request call numbers of cited books.
• If the student can't provide these things, ask a librarian for help gathering this information. While the librarians can't tell you if a student has ever checked out a particular book we can tell you if we own it and where it's located.
• Librarians can also assist you by confirming citations and searching online for passages you feel might have been plagiarized.
• There are many fee-based plagiarism detection services and software packages. Cerritos College does not subscribe to any of these services at this point but many are available for individual subscription.
• Search paper mill websites
• If you want to locate original documents that you suspect were used but not properly cited, try searching for an uncommon, uncharacteristic, or jargon-filled phrase in one of the following:
• The library's subscription databases
• Search engines such as Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Altavista, About.com, Hotbot
• Amazon.com Search Inside the Book
• Look for free essays and research papers on the web

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Try searching for articles on plagiarism and cyber-plagiarism by clicking on one of the links below for Ebsco MasterFILE Premier and/or ERIC.

Suggested search terms: plagiarism; plagiarism and college; plagiarism and "community college"; cyberplagiarism or "cyber plagiarism"; cheating and college; "academic dishonesty"

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There are many web sites dedicated to stopping, detecting, and teaching students about plagiarism. Unfortunately, there are almost an equal number of web sites dedicated to selling research papers and essays. A very small number of these sites are listed here. To get more, use you favorite search engine.

General Interest

• Avoiding Plagiarism - Purdue University Online Writing Lab
• Plagiarism and Intellectual Honest - Dalhousie University
• Using the Works of Others - Georgetown University Library
• Northwest Missouri State University Library - I Need Help Avoiding Plagiarism
• University of Alberta Libraries - How to Avoid Plagiarism
• University of Mississippi - Research Help Tutorial: Plagiarism and Academic Honesty
• Writing Center - Using Evidence - Synthesis
   

Fee-Based Detection Programs and Software

TurnItIn
http://turnitin.com

Glatt Plagiarism Services
http://plagiarism.com

iThenticate.com
https://www.ithenticate.com/

PlagScan
https://www.plagscan.com/en/