Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
Electronic submission of Postgraduate Research Dissertations
through Turnitin
The University of Bristol requires that all postgraduate research dissertations submitted for
examination from January 2015 are checked for plagiarism. The Universityâs Library provides
information and advice to students on plagiarism and all students are strongly advised to
review this material prior to submission
(http://www.bristol.ac.uk/library/support/findinginfo/plagiarism/). This requirement means
that in addition to the two temporary bound copies submitted to the examinations office
students will also be required to submit an identical electronic version. This electronic version
will be submitted to a text comparison software package called Turnitin. The TEL Team
provides information on Turnitin and at the end of this document are links to guidance
intended for both staff and students. The guidance contains links to short videos, which you
are strongly encouraged to review prior to looking at any Turnitin similarity reports.
The report that Turnitin generates includes a number referred to as a âsimilarity indexâ. It is
important to be aware of the fact that there is no absolute figure for the âsimilarity indexâ that
is acceptable nor is there a figure that will trigger further investigations. Each report linked to
a final dissertation submission will be reviewed by an academic and a judgement made on the
likelihood of whether plagiarism may have occurred based on the report and the piece of work
in question.
During the term of a research degree the Faculty hopes students will publish the results of
their research. If this occurs prior to submission of their dissertation, Turnitin may show
similarities between the dissertation and any papers the student has written and had
published as a result of the research. We do not wish to discourage research students from
publishing their work for fear of being accused of plagiarism to their own papers. To cover this
all students should include a statement near the start of their dissertation which clearly lists
any publications arising from their research and explicitly stating their involvement in
generating the publication. This statement should be signed by at least the first and final
authors of each publication to show their agreement of the studentâs contribution.
Alternatively if an authors contribution statement has been published in the journal then the
student may choose to include a copy of this instead. This information will be viewed by the
academic reviewing the Turnitin report of the submitted dissertation.
It is the responsibility of the postgraduate research student (PGR) to ensure that both the
electronic and bound versions of their dissertation are identical, submitted correctly and
within the maximum period of study. Please note that final submission will not be considered
complete until the electronic and bound versions have been submitted correctly.
It is important to note that Turnitin is a text matching piece of software. This means that a
âclearâ report from Turnitin does not exonerate the student in the event that other academic
problems, such as other forms of plagiarism or scientific misconduct (eg falsification of data,
copying of figures or equations without attribution, etc) are subsequently detected within the
dissertation.
This document outlines the Facultyâs policy for the use of Turnitin by its postgraduate research
students and the staff supporting these students.
