TurnItIn and journal publication

[violet]

A journal recently accepted an article of mine, but they have asked for some revisions. They ran the text through TurnItIn and found that 48% of it was listed as corresponding to a student paper "Submitted to University of X." I have absolutely no idea why this would be the case, as I have not copied any of it or published any of it previously. It seems that TurnItIn does not give specifics about the source, so I cannot investigate further. The journal however is asking me to change all of the sections that were flagged by TurnItIn. Does this seem odd? Is there any way this can be handled that does not involve my rewriting entire sections? Thanks for any advice!

[traductio]

Is it possible that you cite (correctly, I'm sure) the same work that the student paper (likely) plagiarizes? In other words, TurnItIn is picking up on similarities between your citations and the student's (likely) plagiarized use of the same sources?

That seems most likely in a field like literature, where direct quotations are commonplace, so it may or may not apply if you're in a field with different citation practices.

But what a weird situation -- I'm sorry you have to deal with it!

[Parasaurolophus]

Is it possible that you cite (correctly, I'm sure) the same work that the student paper (likely) plagiarizes? In other words, TurnItIn is picking up on similarities between your citations and the student's (likely) plagiarized use of the same sources?

That was my first thought, too. I haven't used TurnItIn in years, but when last I did, it tended to flag perfectly legitimate quotations.

[Sun_Worshiper]

You may be able to request the student's paper through Turnitin, and see where the overlap is.  I've done this to double check student papers that appeared to plagiarism.

[violet]

Thanks, everyone for your help! I have never used TurnItIn before but it simply says "Student paper at X [name anonymized here] University." According to the editor, there is no way to determine what the paper actually is or who the author is. So I cannot possible identify the source the article is supposedly copying. However I do not cite any student papers in the article! The author acknowledges the oddity of the situation, and has suggested that perhaps a student at this university has plagiarizing my prior writing in their paper (which may be the case but it wouldn't explain why the text from this unpublished paper is getting flagged by TurnItIn). What I find oddest of all is that, notwithstanding their awareness that this may simply be a glitch, the editor still is asking me to entirely rewrite certain portions, for no other reason that they have been flagged by TurnItIn. I was hoping that someone more familiar with this software could advise how I can push back against this request, and avoid wasted time and energy and a needlessly altered article?

[violet]

In response to traductio: "You may be able to request the student's paper through Turnitin, and see where the overlap is.  I've done this to double check student papers that appeared to plagiarism." I responded before seeing your post, thanks. I will Google around, and contact them if needed, but as mentioned the editor said the paper could not be traced. Hopefully the editor is wrong, given your answer. I will investigate further but do please advise how to get the student paper identified if you know how.

[fizzycist]

The editor is being lazy. It should be their job to work with you to get to the bottom of this. Options include: running it through a different plagiarism software and/or figuring out how to get the relevant info from TurnItIn (I know nothing about this).

[Puget]

This is very odd-- it seems impossible to get a match that high by accident. For one thing TunItIn lets you select to exclude the reference list and quotations, and you would expect them to have done that (and it doesn't sound like those are the passages being flagged anyways), so that's probably not it. The only thing I can think of is have you submitted an earlier version of the paper before, either to this journal or another journal? If so and they ran that through, it could have been incorrectly tagged as a student paper and your paper is being compared to your own earlier draft.

[RatGuy]

You can request info on the original assignment via Turnitin. The system sends an email to the instructor on file at the time of original submission, and all they have to do is click a button to allow you to view the paper through that interface.

(Aside: I have had an instructor contact me directly to refuse that request. It was super weird)

And as other's have said, there are ways to filter out direct quotes and citations. If an editor is using Turnitin in this way, you'd think they'd use it effectively and be able to read the reports.

Personally, I think this request is kind of squirrelly. I haven't heard of journals checking submissions for plagiarism. If the journal has no "we run all submissions through Turnitin" statement in their submission guidelines, then I think this is a problem. That's why we need specific statements on our syllabus to cover this issue.

[Parasaurolophus]

Personally, I think this request is kind of squirrelly. I haven't heard of journals checking submissions for plagiarism. If the journal has no "we run all submissions through Turnitin" statement in their submission guidelines, then I think this is a problem. That's why we need specific statements on our syllabus to cover this issue.

There's one major journal in my field that runs articles through a plagiarism-checker. AFAIK it's the only one that does this, however. (And yes, it does have a statement declaring it in the submission guidelines.)

[ab_grp]

Personally, I think this request is kind of squirrelly. I haven't heard of journals checking submissions for plagiarism. If the journal has no "we run all submissions through Turnitin" statement in their submission guidelines, then I think this is a problem. That's why we need specific statements on our syllabus to cover this issue.

There's one major journal in my field that runs articles through a plagiarism-checker. AFAIK it's the only one that does this, however. (And yes, it does have a statement declaring it in the submission guidelines.)

I submitted an article to a journal that does not have a specific statement about plagiarism checks in its author guidelines.  However, the parent publishing company does have a statement in the ethics section that material may be run through a particular checker at any point in the peer review or publication process.  I remember coming across that statement when trying to follow the trail to get more specific formatting restriction information, but others may not end up seeing it.  I think that can be a problem in general, when the specific journal has one set of guidelines and the parent publisher has a different set of default guidelines. 

OP, I hope the tips that others have shared here help you clear this up.  How frustrating! I'm sorry that I have not used TurnItIn myself and can't offer specific advice myself.

[violet]

Thanks, everyone for your advice! I'm following it and will let you know the outcome.

[Caracal]

Thanks, everyone for your advice! I'm following it and will let you know the outcome.

The strangest part about this is that they would just ask you to revise it. If they think you plagiarized wouldn't they just withdraw their acceptance? The editor seems to be treating it as if this is just a technical problem which makes no sense. Either the similarities with this random student paper are due to coincidence (or citations or some other explanation which has nothing to do with you), or you stole this student's work, which you obviously didn't do. Telling you to revise the passages makes no sense at all.

[mamselle]

Was this an invited article?

Did the invitation have spelling and grammatical errors?

I.e., is this a legit journal?

Mostly just kidding, but...

Sounds weird.

M.

[research_prof]

If you have used the TurnItIn version provided by your university (or your student has) in the past and have submitted this paper just for a sanity check, most probably turnItIn has now added your paper in its database and that's why you saw this outcome. It has happened to me in the past.. Bottom line, I stopped using TurnItIn since it causes more trouble than helping out.