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Text matching at UWA - Turnitin: For students

This guide introduces the Turnitin text matching tool used at UWA

Using Turnitin

The PDF guides on this page explain how to submit a Turnitin assignment, view an originality / similarity report, and access feedback from your lecturer through Turnitin. 

Submitting an assignment through the LMS

Supported file types

The maximum file size for Turnitin assignments is 40MB (megabytes), and documents must be less than 400 pages and contain at least 20 words of text.

Turnitin supports the following file formats:

  • Microsoft Word (.doc/.docx)

  • OpenOffice Text (.odt)

  • WordPerfect (.wpd)

  • PostScript (.ps/.eps)

  • HTML

  • Hangul Word Processor file (.hwp)

  • Rich text format (.rtf)

  • Plain text (.txt)

  • Portable Document Format (.pdf)

  • Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx, .ppt, .ppsx, and .pps)

  • Microsoft Excel (.xls and .xlsx)

Note: PDF documents must contain text to be submitted. PDF files containing only images of text (such as a page scanned from a print book) will be rejected during the upload attempt. For all file types, Turnitin checks for matches in text only, not in images or videos.

Pages files can not be submitted through Turnitin. UWA students can download and install Microsoft Office 365 for free

View your originality / similarity report

Note that unit coordinators will determine whether originality / similarity reports are made visible to students. 

Text that matches another source is highlighted and identified with a number. There's no set percentage 'cut-off' for similarity - the similarity score just indicates where your work matches text from other sources, and a text match does not necessarily signal plagiarism. For example, indented quotations, citations and your bibliography may appear as text matches, but it doesn't mean you need to change them.

Conversely, a lack of matches does not in itself confirm that no academic misconduct has occurred.​ For more information on what constitutes academic misconduct and for guidance on how to avoid it, see the Current Students academic conduct webpage and the How to avoid Academic Misconduct guide. 

For guidance on how to reference, see the University Library referencing guides or make an appointment via the Book a Librarian service for expert advice from librarians. 

The STUDYSmarter website also has resources to help you with avoiding plagiarism.

View your feedback

Feedback is an essential part of the learning process and students are entitled to feedback on all assessed work. Under the University Policy on: Assessment, feedback on assessments submitted on time will be made available to students at least one week before the next assessment in the unit is due, or no more than 15 University working days after submission, whichever is sooner.

Feedback can take a variety of forms; it may consist of short in-line comments next to specific sections of your assessment, or a final explanatory comment. Your unit coordinator may use an annotated rubric to provide feedback, which you may need to open separately to your submitted assessment. The guide below explains how to access your feedback and marks through Turnitin. 

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 Except for logos, Canva designs, AI generated images or where otherwise indicated, content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.