A Quantitative Evaluation of Turnitin from an L2 Science and Engineering Perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the functionality and accuracy of Turnitin results as applied to 68 science and engineering research papers, and the potential use of the software in a second language context. Results showed Turnitin found “similar matching” in 99% of papers; however, an analysis eliminating false positives and categorizing actual plagiarism events as outright, paraphrase and patchwork plagiarism, or stealing an apt term showed only 29% featured plagiarized material, and in most cases, evidence suggested no intent to deceive. Findings indicate that Turnitin can be useful, particularly as a pedagogical rather than policing tool, but “similarity” percentages can be misleading and careful user evaluation of the entire paper shown with flagged highlighting is necessary in order to fairly assess student intent.