UTK currently uses two distinct tools for text matching, originality, and plagiarism deterrent: iThenticate and Turnitin Similarity. While faculty, students, and staff have access to both tools, each tool behaves differently in key areas, as described below: 

Intended Audience  

Turnitin Similarity is designed for undergraduate, assignment-based similarity checking; the author would be a student or participant who is assigned multiple writing assignments over the course of a semester or year, with each assignment qualifying for a grade or credit towards a grade in their registered course.  

iThenticate is designed for long-term writing projects, such as a dissertation, thesis, research paper, or other writing intended for publication; the author could be a member of faculty, a postgraduate student, or a researcher/group of researchers.  

Access  

Turnitin Similarity is integrated seamlessly within Online@UT (Canvas), the university’s learning management system, which provides students the ability to submit written assignments, review their similarity report, and view assignment grades.  

iThenticate is an online folder-based application; users log in to https://app.ithenticate.com/en_us/login/fed/incommon to access their folders and run similarity checks. iThenticate is not integrated with Online@UT (Canvas). Users may share folders with one another, otherwise folders and the work contained within them are private to the user.  

Databases Compared  

Turnitin Similarity compares student work against Turnitin’s database of 47 billion current and archived Internet pages, 1.9 billion student papers, and over 190 million articles, from the top 97% of publications.  

iThenticate leverages over 90 million journal articles and subscription content sources from premier publishers, including those in partnership with Crossref. Work submitted via iThenticate does not get compared against the same set of articles, papers, or databases as those submitted via Turnitin (see above).  

Submission Indexing  

Turnitin Similarity allows submission indexing. When enabled, all student submissions will be indexed in UTK’s private repository and Turnitin’s submitted works repository. These submissions will be available for comparison in Similarity Reports by users within and outside UTK. 

iThenticate submissions are never indexed in any repository due to the sensitive nature of the writing; this also ensures that drafts submitted multiple times (as high-stakes submissions often are) are not compared against each other, as that could lead to “false positives” when it comes to text matching.  

Support 

Turnitin Similarity is supported by OIT; users who need help with Turnitin Similarity can submit an online help request. 

iThenticate is supported by the UTK Office of Research and Engagement Development; users who need help with iThenticate can email ithenticate@utk.edu.