Plagiarism prevention and text similarity check using Turnitin tool

When using information from different sources in studies and scientific works, it must be paraphrased in your own words or quoted exactly in quotation marks, and an in-text citation must be provided next to the quoted or paraphrased text. References of the sources used must be provided in the list of references as well.

Plagiarism is identified when sources of information are used improperly in academic and scientific works, as well as when another author’s ideas are presented as your own, verbatim translations of texts from other languages are provided, illustrative material (images, tables, figures), data, or content generated by generative artificial intelligence (e.g. ChatGPT, GPT-4, Microsoft Copilot, etc.) are used without citing the source. For information on how to properly cite and reference information sources in your studies and academic papers, see reference examples and in-text citation examples provided by the American Psychological Association.

Plagiarism can be identified by the author of the work himself noticing the improper use of the source or parts thereof, by comparing the work with other works, or by checking the work with plagiarism detection software that provides results in the form of a similarity report.

Lithuanian Sports University applies the principles of Academic Ethics, seeks to foster responsibility and academic literacy among the University’s community, and uses plagiarism prevention measures in its study and research activities.

Based on the approved Procedure for Using the Turnitin Plagiarism Detection Tool (in Lithuanian), from the spring semester of 2025/2026, university checks text similarities in written work and final theses using the Turnitin tool in the university’s Online Learning System.

The University checks for text similarity in written work using the Turnitin tool in the Online Learning System.

The Turnitin Plagiarism Detection Tool automatically checks for similarity in all written works uploaded to the University’s Online Learning System. To activate the checking function, the lecturer and student must perform the following steps:

Lecturer:

• in the Online Learning System, create a task with the Turnitin Plagiarism Detection Tool function activated in your module;
• assign students whose written work shall be checked to the created task;
• determine by selecting the appropriate option whether or not the students shall be able to see the results of the similarity check;
• inform the students about the assignment, its deadlines, and the rights regarding the similarity check granted;
• when reviewing the similarity report, the lecturer shall provide their comments for the students using the ‘Comment’ function.

Turnitin instructions for lecturers (for written work).

Student:

• upload your work to the task created for text similarity check in the relevant module in the Online Learning System;
• review the lecturer’s comments and notes;
• if permitted, edit, correct, and re-upload the work.

Turnitin instructions for students (for written work).

In the text similarity report, Turnitin provides the percentage of text similarity and highlights (colours) the parts of the text that match other sources, i.e. previously published works by the same author or other authors. Additionally, it provides links to the matched sources, as well as information about paraphrasing and inappropriate citation.

Important: The Plagiarism Detection Tool only identifies parts of the text that match other sources, but does not analyse the content of the work. The quality of students’ work is assessed and possible plagiarism is determined by lecturers who are familiar with the results of the similarity report.

Important: There may be similarities detected in the works that are not considered a case of plagiarism, but there must be no instances of plagiarism in the works. A high percentage of similarities may indicate that the work was not done independently.

Text similarity checkers only check for similarity in text, but cannot detect matches in non-text information (e.g. images, photos, drawings, etc.).

As mentioned above, some text similarities are not considered plagiarism, e.g.: individual words or sentences of general nature; general knowledge (facts) that does not need to be cited; reference lists, source descriptions, in-text citations; terms and names; quotations (exact excerpts provided in quotation marks, with source indicated, no longer than a paragraph, or a block quotation if consisting of 40 words or more) etc.

About Turnitin

If you have any questions regarding Turnitin procedures, please contact us at dziuljeta.griskute@lsu.lt.

The text similarity check of final theses at the University is performed using the Turnitin tool in three stages:

• during the preparation of the work;
• for attestation/approbation;
• for defense.

Final thesis text similarity check while writing a paper

To perform a text similarity check, the thesis supervisor and the student perform the following actions:

The thesis supervisor:

• creates an assignment in the e-learning environment module for the preparation of the final thesis, selecting the Turnitin resource of the text similarity check tool (Turnitin Assignment 2);
• reviews and confirms the mandatory assignment parameters in the opened Turnitin assignment, provides a description (summary) of the assignment and sets the text similarity checking rights (for example, whether the work can be submitted multiple times), the assessment scale (optional), the start, end and publication dates;
• informs the student about the Turnitin assignment, the deadlines for submitting the work and the granted rights;
• reviews the uploaded work and provides his assessment and comments to the student in the generated match report, using the comment function;
• must not save submitted work to repository during the preparation of the final thesis.

Turnitin instructions for supervisors (during the preparation of the final thesis)

The student:

• in accordance with the established deadlines, uploads his/her final thesis (in whole or in part) to the assignment created for text similarity check in the E-learning environment module for the preparation of the final thesis;
• reviews the automatically generated text matching report, received supervisor notes, comments;
• if allowed, edits (corrects) the work and uploads it again to the same assignment created for text similarity check.

Turnitin instructions for students (for final theses)

Final thesis verification for attestation / approval / defense

The reviewer and attestation / approval / defense commission:

• in the e-learning environment module, in the task created for text similarity check (attestation / approval / defense), the reviewer checks the students’ work using the text matching tool Turnitin;
• cannot change the parameters of the created Turnitin task;
• after reviewing the text matching report, they provide comments to the student.

Turnitin instructions for reviewers / commissions (attestation / approval / defense)

The student:

• in accordance with the established deadlines, uploads his/her final thesis to the task created for text similarity check (attestation / approval or defense) in the e-learning environment module;
• reviews the automatically generated text matching report, received notes, comments;
• if allowed, edits (corrects) the work and uploads it again to the same task created for text matching.

Turnitin instructions for students (for final theses)

Researchers who wish to check the manuscripts of their publications (articles, books) using the text similarity checker are kindly requested to contact the Head of the Library, Tel. +370 690 09930, e-mail asta.zarauskiene@lsu.lt.

In accordance with the LSU publishing process, the Library and the Editorial Boards (Editorial Committees) of scientific publications strive to check all manuscripts submitted for publication using available text similarity detection tools.