Mahatma Gandhi Central Library

Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

USER GUIDE

Getting Started with Turnitin

(For Faculty)

1. How to get a Turnitin Account?

2. Creating ‘Class’ and ‘Assignment’ in Turnitin.
 Important Optional Settings
3. Checking your Documents in Turnitin for Similarity
4. Creating a Turnitin Account for Students/Scholars.
5. Steps for Students/Scholars to get Turnitin Account

1. How to get a Turnitin Account?

If you don’t have a Turnitin account,

1. Please send an email from your IITR email id to [email protected] or

[email protected] with your full name.
2. Team MGCL will create your account, and you will get an email from Turnitin.
3. Follow the instructions in the email sent by Turnitin to set your password and set up your
account.

2. Creating ‘Class’ and ‘Assignment’ in Turnitin

It is required to create at least one ‘Class’ and one ‘Assignment’ to start using Turnitin. The
required steps are listed below.

Creating Class

1. Visit https://www.turnitin.com (it is not necessary to be on the campus to access it).

2. Login to your Turnitin user account using your registered email id and password.

3. To create a class, click on

4. In the ‘Class Settings’ form:
a. Leave the Class type as ‘Standard.’
b. Give a Class name, e.g. PhD, Master, MTN-522, etc.
c. Enter an Enrollment key (this is required to allow your student(s) to independently
upload a document to carry out similarity checking).
d. Select ‘Subject area(s)’ and Students level(s).
e. Select a ‘Class end date’ (Semester-end or as far as necessary)
f. Click on the Submit button to save your newly created Class.
g. You can now see the newly created Class listed on the page.

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Creating Assignment
5. An Assignment is created within a Class.
6. Select a ‘Class’ to create an assignment and click on ‘Add Assignment.’
7. Click on ‘Next Step’ if prompted.
8. In the Assignment form:
a. Enter an Assignment Title like Thesis, Papers, Assignment_1, etc.
b. Select due date (before the ‘Class end date’ selected in step 3e above).

c. Click on

d. These optional settings are VERY IMPORTANT.

Important Optional Settings

You may decide on the optional settings 9a, 9b, 9c and 9d listed below as per your requirements.
(The selected options shown below have been used by MGCL to check PhD theses for similarity
since 2016). However, 9e must be selected as ‘no repository’.
9. In the ‘Optional Settings’ form, set the following options.

a. Generate Similarity Reports for student submission

If you wish to allow students to keep checking the similarity report and improve
the assignment/thesis until due date, please select the second option i.e.
“immediately can overwrite until due date”.

b. Exclude bibliographic material [Yes]

c. Exclude quoted material [Yes]

d. Exclude small sources [Yes]

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 e. Submit papers to: [no repository].
THIS OPTION IS VERY IMPORTANT.

By default, this is set to ‘standard repository’ that means the papers/theses

submitted for checking in Turnitin will be added to its standard repository. And,
therefore, on next checking the same content shows 100% similarity. Please note,
at times, it takes a lot of efforts and time to get the paper removed from the
Turnitin repository.

f. Save the selected options as your default...

If you wish to use the above optional settings as default for all future assignments,
check the box as shown below before clicking on the submit button. Doing so also
ensures that No repository is your default setting for future Assignments that you
create.

10. Save the changes by clicking on button [available at the bottom].

3. Checking your Documents in Turnitin for Similarity

To check your documents for similarity, create a class and an assignment by following the steps
mentioned above and then follow the steps shown below.

1. Visit https://www.turnitin.com
2. Login to your Turnitin user account using your credentials.
3. Select the class you want to use [listed below ‘Class Name’ as shown in the image].

4. Select the Assignment you want to use by clicking on ‘View’. For example, ‘PAPER’ as
shown in the image for class 2019.

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5. Click on ‘Submit File’.

6. In the File upload form, fill the following details:

a. Author [Non-enrolled student]
b. First Name
c. Last Name
d. Submission Title

7. Click on ‘Choose from this computer’ as shown in the image.

8. Browse and select the desired file you want to submit into Turnitin for checking.
9. Click on ‘Upload’. You will be prompted to confirm the submission.

10. Click on ‘Confirm’. The file will be uploaded on the Turnitin server, and the report will be
generated in due course.

The time taken in generating the report depends on many factors like file size, server load
etc. Normally it takes 5-10 minutes for papers and 20-30 minutes for thesis.

11. You can see the report by visiting the assignment page by clicking on ‘Go to assignment
page’ or by following Step 3 & 4 as explained above.

12. Assignment page will look like the below image. The report can be seen by clicking on the
TITLE of the submission or the SIMILARITY index [--%].

Please note clicking on SIMILARITY index will show text-only report and clicking on the
TITLE will give the report in PDF format.
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 13. Downloading the Similarity Report.
a. Text-only report: Click on the download icon shown on the right-upper corner of
the page.

b. PDF report: Click on the download icon shown on the right side of the page and
select Current view in the pop-up window.

4. Creating Turnitin Account for Scholars

The Turnitin accounts for students/research scholars can only be created with the permission of
the instructors. For this, the Instructor will need to create a Class and an Assignment and share
the ‘class id’ and ‘enrollment key’ with the students. The required steps are listed below.

1. Visit https://www.turnitin.com
2. Login to your Turnitin user account using your registered email id and password.
3. Select an already created class, refer Step 4g below and go to Step 5 below OR

4. Create a new class by clicking

5. In the ‘Class Settings’ form:

a. Leave the Class type as ‘Standard.’
b. Give a Class name, e.g. PhD, Master, MTN-522, etc.
c. Enter an Enrollment key (required if you wish to allow your student(s) to
independently access Turnitin to upload a document and carry out similarity
check).
d. Select ‘Subject area(s)’ and Students level(s).
e. Select a ‘Class end date’ (Semester-end or as far as necessary)
f. Click on Submit button to save your newly created class.
g. Note down the ‘Class ID’ and ‘Enrollment Key’. Should you ever forget the class
ID, it is the number to the left of the class name on your class list. You can view or
change your enrollment key by editing the class.
h. You can now see the newly created class listed on the page.
i. Create an Assignment in this Class (refer to Section 2 above).

6. Share the Class ID and Enrollment Key with the student/research scholar whom you require
to access Turnitin independently and upload document(s) for similarity checking.
7. The steps to be followed by the student/research scholar to create Turnitin account by joining
your Turnitin Class are described in the next section.
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 5. Steps for Students/Scholars to get Turnitin Account

After getting the Class ID and Enrollment Key from the Instructor, Student/Research Scholar
will have to follow the below-mentioned steps to register for a Turnitin account.

1. Visit https://www.turnitin.com
2. Click on ‘Create Account’ at the top-right corner of the page.
3. On the next screen, select how you will be using Turnitin by clicking on ‘student’.
4. In the ‘Create a Student Profile’ form, fill the following details:
a. Class Id (received from the instructor)
b. Class Enrollment Key (received from the instructor)
c. First Name
d. Last Name
e. Email address: Enter your IITR email id
f. Confirm email address
g. Enter your password (longer than 7 characters; for Turnitin account)
h. Confirm password
i. Select a secret question
j. Enter the answer to your selected question
k. Browse through the ‘User Agreement’
l. Check the box ‘I’m not a robot.
5. Click on I Agree—Create Profile to complete the account creation.
6. Congratulations! Here is your Turnitin Account with the class you have enrolled.

IF FACED WITH ANY DIFFICULTY IN USING TURNITIN PLEASE CONTACT:

Periodical Section, MGCL, [email protected] Extn. 4572

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