THE Turnitin program compares students’ coursework against millions of websites for evidence that they have copied material and passed it off as their own.

Work is uploaded and checked against a database of more than 4.5 billion web pages for evidence of matching text. The software is said to be sensitive enough to detect even very small fragments of copied work.

An onscreen “originality report” is produced within seconds. It highlights any plagiarised material and identifies both the sources of the information and the percentage of the student’s work that has come from it.

A similarity index then calculates a paper’s overall correspondence to information that has been found online and the total percentage of the work that is plagiarised.

Text is colour-coded to indicate that it has been copied from different materials, and links connect each section of plagiarised work to the web page from which it was taken, including essays posted on “cheat sites”.

Will Murray, the chief executive of Northumbria Learning, said: “The majority of plagiarism cases are the result of inadequate referencing skills and a lack of understanding on the subject.

“Our work is essential to inform institutions, librarians, academics and students on the importance of reference and citing work correctly to ensure that the integrity of academic qualifications awarded in the UK is not undermined.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating